In her role as director of Colorado Law’s Byron R. White Center, Melissa Hart brought a lot of distinguished judges to CU Boulder.

Now she’s become one herself — in December, Colo. Gov. John Hickenlooper named the CU law professor to the state Supreme Court.

An expert in constitutional law, Hart first came to CU in 2000, after a pair of prominent legal clerkships, a law firm job in Washington, D.C., and experience as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.

A graduate of East High School in Denver and Harvard Law School, she served as a U.S. Supreme Court clerk for former Justice John Paul Stevens.

“I am really excited to join the six justices currently on the court in working to make sure that our system is efficient and fair — that the work it does is clear and transparent, and that it works for people all over Colorado,” Hart said after Hickenlooper announced her appointment, according to The Denver Post.

Hart — whose grandfather Archibald Cox served as U.S. Solicitor General under John F. Kennedy and as Watergate special prosecutor — had previously made the shortlist for a seat on Colorado’s seven-member Supreme Court, in 2015.

She got another shot after Allison H. Eid — a former Colorado Law professor — left the court for a position on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. (That seat came open when its prior occupant — former visiting Colorado Law professor Neil Gorsuch — joined the U.S. Supreme Court last April.)

The Colorado Supreme Court has at least two other members with strong Buff ties: Justice Nathan B. Coats (Econ’71; Law’77) is an alumnus. Chief Justice Nancy E. Rice has been an adjunct law professor since 1987.

Hart will continue to teach a course at CU.

The law school will name a new director for the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law, named after former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White (�����Dz�’38).

Photo by ©iStock/MarkusBeck/Headshot courtesy CU Law School 

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Salt of the Earth 

Byron White (Econ’38) secured a place in the annals of American law when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962. His one-time clerk Neil Gorsuch, a former visiting Colorado Law professor and the court’s newest justice, won his place in April.

By then, Wiley B. Rutledge (Law’22) lay deep in the history books: The first CU Boulder graduate to serve on the nation’s highest court joined in 1943.

Often overlooked due to his short tenure — he died six years later — Rutledge nonetheless established himself as a model of collegiality whose amiable, humble, tough-but-fair ways helped stabilize a group of quarrelsome peers.

“Wiley Rutledge had this real skill of making people feel valued and that they were heard,” said Craig Green, a Temple University law professor who has written about Rutledge.

A committed advocate for child labor laws, Rutledge used his brief Supreme Court tenure to bolster freedom of speech and religion, the separation of church and state and limits on executive power.

Born in Kentucky in 1894, Rutledge studied in Tennessee and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began law school at Indiana University while teaching high school, but left to work full time and save money.

He and his wife, Annabel, resettled in Albuquerque, taught and kept saving. In 1920 Rutledge resumed law school at CU. Again he taught, at the now vanished Boulder State Preparatory School.

Rutledge earned his degree, joined a local firm and then CU’s law faculty.

In 1939, after serving as law dean at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Iowa, he became a judge, named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Four years later, he was on the Supreme Court.

A tireless worker with high blood pressure, a smoking habit and a taste, Green said, for “meat and potatoes,” Rutledge died in 1949 after a stroke. He was 55.

A half-century later, a major biography appeared. Author John Ferren called it Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court. The title says it all.    

Photo courtesy Rutledge family 

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Byron R. White (Econ’38) came to notice for his athletic prowess, then proved himself a star in almost everything else.

Perhaps CU Boulder’s most celebrated alumnus, the football hero dubbed “Whizzer White” graduated first in his class, won a Rhodes Scholarship, served as a U.S. Naval officer, went to Yale Law School and, at age 44, became one of the youngest ever U.S. Supreme Court justices.

A Colorado native, White also ranks among the longest-serving justices — 31 years.

In this photograph, one in a series of CU football players, he was still a teenager.

White died in 2002, in Denver. He would have turned 100 this June.

Photo courtesy CU Heritage Center

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The United States could have a new Supreme Court Justice soon — one with CU ties. Federal judge Neil Gorsuch, Boulder resident and visiting Colorado Law professor, was nominated for the court’s vacant seat in late January. Congress was expected to consider his candidacy in March.

If Gorsuch, the son of two Colorado Law graduates, is confirmed, he would give CU Boulder and the state of Colorado their deepest SCOTUS affiliation since 1993, the year Justice Byron White (Econ’38) retired and returned to the Rockies. White himself makes a timely cameo in this football-rich issue: 2017 marks the centennial of his birth. An All-American halfback, he was also his class’s valedictorian, epitomizing the scholar-athlete.

Whatever your feelings about Supreme Court politics, and whether you like sports or not, it must be said: Colorado lawyers and athletes have set tongues wagging from sea to sea.

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The president nominated Neil Gorsuch, a visiting professor at Colorado Law School, for the U.S. Supreme Court. If confirmed, he would succeed Antonin Scalia, who died last year. Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge based in Denver, has taught ethics and antitrust law at Colorado Law since 2008. He lives in Boulder. His parents, Anne Gorsuch Burford and David Gorsuch, were both members of Colorado Law’s Class of 1964. Gorsuch went to Harvard Law School. Two CU Boulder alumni have served on the U.S. Supreme Court: Byron White (Econ’38) and Wiley Rutledge (������’22).

Photo courtesy Washington Post/Getty Images

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