Pierre-Louis to be named first black woman to state’s Supreme Court

TRENTON » New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday he would nominate Fabiana Pierre-Louis to the state Supreme Court. She would be the first black woman to hold the post, if confirmed.

Pierre-Louis would succeed Walter Timpone, who reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 in November. She is Murphy’s first pick for the high court and must now be confirmed by the Democrat-led Senate.

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Pierre-Louis was the first person to go to law school in her family. At the event in Trenton where Murphy said he will formally nominate her, she seemed to get choked up talking about the role they played in her life.

“Many years ago my parents came to the United States from Haiti with not much more than the clothes on their backs and the American dream in their hearts. I think they have achieved that dream beyond measure because my life is certainly not representative of the traditional trajectory of someone who would one day be nominated to the Supreme Court of New Jersey,” she said.

Murphy, a Democrat, said that Pierre-Louis would carry on the legacy of John Wallace, who was the last black justice on the state’s highest court and who she clerked for. Murphy lamented that Wallace was not renominated when his first term expired in 2010 — the first time that had happened under the state’s current constitution.

“A core tenet of my Administration is a commitment to an independent, fair-minded judiciary that reflects the immense diversity of our great state,” he said in a statement.

Pierre-Louis is a partner at Montgomery McCracken in Cherry Hill, where she is in the white collar and government investigations practice.

Before that, she served for nearly a decade as an assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey. As part of that role, she was the attorney-in-charge of the Camden branch office — the first woman of color to hold that a position, according to her biography on Montgomery McCracken’s website.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie nominated Timpone in 2016 to the state’s highest court.

CHRIS PEDOTA — THE RECORD VIA AP Fabiana Pierre-Louis, who was nominated to the New Jersey Supreme Court by Gov. Phil Murphy, speaks during a news conference Friday in Trenton.