A bender

Farewell to Ginger Berrigan

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are those who help the arc bend towards justice. Ginger Berrigan was a bender.
- Judge Eldon Fallon

Have you ever been friends with someone who is truly exceptional?

The closeness can, in some ways, put blinders on you. Yes, you’re aware of how special they are, but mostly you think of them as simply your friend, and not as someone who is leaving ripples in the fabric of society.

Farewelling Ginger

On Thursday, a motley crew made up of judges and clerks, civil rights activists and lawyers, court staff, former US Assistant District Attorneys, family and friends, gathered in the main courtroom on the fifth floor of the US District Courthouse in New Orleans to farewell Judge Ginger Berrigan, who died on November 15th after a protracted illness.

I’ve written about Ginger before and others have given her a send off in local newspapers and legal newsletters.

She was the first woman to serve as Chief Judge of the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana.

She was also the first judge to bedeck her chambers with lavish and wondrous Christmas decorations for an annual, legendary party where you were as likely to rub shoulders with the courthouse’s cleaning and cafeteria staff as with judges, clerks, lawyers, and the leading lights of Louisiana’s civil rights and gay rights movements.

Ginger liked the decorations so much that they never came down.

Her courtroom was adorned with a disco ball; her office sported a pride flag and bookshelves filled with handmade gifts from prisoners. She brought donuts for the lawyers appearing before her.

A reluctant lawyer…

Ginger entered the law somewhat reluctantly—she had trained as a journalist and been drawn to the South to work on the campaign of civil rights activist, Charles Evers—and she was always clear that her “sole interest in law was for the purpose of justice.”

Before becoming a judge, she had been a criminal defense lawyer, a member of the ACLU, and of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (she’d say “I’m the F in PFLAG”.)

She took busloads of young, at-risk people to Angola Prison to hear first hand from the inmates about the consequences of youthful misdeeds.

…and a reluctant judge

Ginger was equally reluctant to become a judge, having come to love her work as a defense lawyer, acting directly on behalf of those caught up in the criminal justice system.

Eleanor Acheson, who was on the three-person vetting panel that interviewed Ginger when Bill Clinton nominated her to the US District Court, says that Ginger stunned the panel by saying, “I’m not sure that I want the job,” before going on to talk with them for hours about the law and justice in such a deeply considered way that they were absolutely determined to have her on the bench.

Judge Ginger Berrigan

She told judges new to the district court that they would be seeing people on “the very worst day in their lives” and to keep that in mind as they dealt with them. After handing out a sentence in a difficult trial, Ginger would descend from the bench to hug the defendant.

She treated waitresses and cleaners and checkout clerks with the same respect she showed to judges and all those who came into her courtroom.

At the farewell to Ginger on Thursday, when Ginger’s sister, Kathy Careddu, asked the packed room who of them had considered Ginger a mentor, a forest of hands were raised.

Kathy also said something that really sticks with me: that Ginger was completely and utterly unjudgmental.

It appears that’s a great qualification for a judge.