TERRE HAUTE —
Under the radar and against the backdrop of the fractious right-to-work battle going on in Indianapolis, one of state’s leading public servants delivered his valedictory in typical understated, even quiet, style two weeks ago. And before Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard slips away into retirement, his work needs to be acknowledged and praised.
In his annual State of the Judiciary speech — appropriately titled “On the Way to Something Better” — Shepard bid adieu to the court he has positively influenced for 27 years, 25 years as its chief.
The 65-year-old Shepard, who was appointed to the court at age 38 by former Indiana Gov. Robert Orr, will retire in March. When he goes into the next stage of his life, he will have left behind an enviable, steady and progressive record that has benefited the people of his home state. In many ways, his speech title summarized his career. Not flashy, substantive. Not noisy, collaborative. Not revolutionary, evolutionary. Toward something better.
In his quarter century on the state bench, Shepard has seen — and influenced — changes that have made the courts better. As he noted, not that long ago “our courts were a collection of silos that rarely connected. … For much of our history, rules and practices varied so much from one courtroom to the next that even lawyers, and certainly citizens, could rightly think they were crossing the state line when they simply went over to the county next door.”
It was on Shepard’s watch also that courts began to deal differently with family cases — including divorce, domestic violence and advocacy for crime victims. “Indiana’s ability to care for abused or neglected children, for example, is light years ahead of where it was just a decade ago,” he said.
In his farewell speech, Shepard went out of his way to note the work legislatures and governors, current and past, have contributed to improvements in the judiciary.
But a big part of the cooperation the chief justice has received, we suspect, is because of Shepard himself. He is noted as intelligent, well-studied and nonpartisan. One would be hard-pressed to identify him by political party based on his statements and actions over the years.
That nonpartisanship is supposed to occur on the bench where open minds are charged with reaching true and fair decisions. But Shepard has been far more successful in that regard than many others at various court levels. He has been so successful that when Gov. Mitch Daniels sought two respected persons to head the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, Shepard was chosen as the Republican to share the commission’s name with former Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan.
As he summed up his career at the Indiana Supreme Court, Shepard thanked those who had helped him along the way. “To be engaged with so many splendid people in so many worthwhile causes,” he told an audience in the Indiana House chamber, “has for me been a better career than one could ever imagine.”
Actually, Mr. Chief Justice, the thanks is ours to you for serving the cause of justice and the needs of your fellow Hoosiers so well and so long.
A notable stop to the ‘anthem’ bill
We are glad to see that a particularly out-of-tune Indiana Senate bill reached its final stanza last week.
It was a bill that would have established confining standards — insured by signed contracts and with $25 fines for violations — for performances of “The Star Spangled Banner” in public schools and colleges.
The head of the Senate education committee, Dennis Kruse of Auburn, thankfully, chose not to bring the bill to a vote, effectively silencing it for this legislative session. Kruse said, correctly, that the bill drew attention to the anthem. We’d differ, though, that it was positive or that it was attention that was necessary.
As we said in railing against the bill in an editorial earlier this month, Sen. Vaneta Becker’s plan to have the state set standards for the anthem’s performance — allowing little variation from its standard presentation, no personal interpretations driven by heritage or expression — was unnecessary, given the song’s nearly 200 years of survival. Worse than unnecessary, the bill, had it become law, would have been counter to the very freedoms expressed in the national anthem.
No encore, please.
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