Third Circuit Judge Wendy Marie Baxter has been chosen by the Michigan Chronicle to receive the 2013 Women of Excellence Award.
After matriculating at Eastern Michigan University as one of only two black women in the College of Business, Baxter applied her Bachelor of Business Administration Management Degree to the competitive retail industry. As a department manager, she toiled 16 hour days alongside her male counterparts for half their pay. She quit. Baxter went into business for herself, buying, rehabbing, and selling homes. She used her real estate license to finance her law school tuition.
After positions in banking at First Federal, managing the oil and gas leases in the Finance Department of General Motors, to court administration as a docket analyst, she became acquainted with the machinations of elections as a volunteer in campaigns of Hubert Humphrey, Coleman Young and her study buddy, the late Judge Beverley Anne Jasper.
When she launched her own judicial campaign she was a virtual unknown. That did not stop her from winning a seat on the 36th District Court. She was a strategist that catapulted the Hon. Adam Shakoor to be the first and only Muslim to become chief judge of that court. Soon afterwards she moved to the Recorder’s Court criminal bench where she helped to write the criminal jury instructions still in use by every jurist in Michigan today. She has landed on all her courts’ executive committees helping to shape court policy and was at the helm of the Association of Black Judges of Michigan and The Mediation Tribunal managing the money.
In addition to serving in Representative Assembly, the legislative governance body of the State Bar of Michigan, Baxter has served with distinction as a member of the Civil Division of the Wayne County Third Circuit Court bench. Her interpretation of law has guided the region through the morass of understanding all three emergency manager laws, the interplay of city, state and federal laws on medical marijuana, the rights and responsibilities of titans of government, employment labor and management, health care and a public school education. As a guest lecturer at the National Judicial College, Baxter has shared her expertise in law and cutting edge topics of Bioethics. Recently, in recognition of her legal and business acumen, she was one two judges selected out of 61 to staff the newly created Business Court to serve the corporate community in dispute resolution. A champion of justice and law, Baxter is known for her ability to settle cases, relate to people from all walks of life, no nonsense directness and sense of humor.
The mother of a budding film maker and an ivy league educated lawyer, Baxter keeps her head and hand in the community with the semiannual neighborhood
yard sale that results in a mass charitable contribution to the Salvation Army, her membership in Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and her love of music,
dance and the arts. She is a past board member of the Metro Youth Board and the Eastern Michigan University Alumnae Board of Directors and a participant with Dr. Charles H Wright at some of the initial meetings on West Grand Blvd that matured into our African American Museum.
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