After serving 16 years on the Michigan Supreme Court, Marilyn Kelly is joining the faculty of Wayne State University Law School as its first “distinguished jurist in residence.”
WSU Law Dean Jocelyn Benson said students as well as faculty “will benefit from the judge sharing her years of expertise and experiences with us. She will be a tremendous asset for the Law School, as she has been for the state.”
Kelly, 74, was prevented from seeking re-election to the high court by state Constitution, which bars judicial candidates over the age of 70 from running for office.
“I look forward to this,” Kelly told faculty assembled recently for an informal luncheon in her honor. “It’s an opportunity to be creative. It seems a natural fit to me that I should come back here.”
The 1971 alumna of Wayne State University Law School already serves on the school’s Board of Visitors executive committee.
So far, retirement hasn’t meant quiet time for the judge.
Most recently, Kelly addressed the American Bar Association midyear convention in Texas, speaking before the standing committee on judicial independence and detailing her work as co-chair of the state’s Judicial Selection Task Force and its efforts at improving the way judges are elected.
She also participated in a workshop sponsored by Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA), which pools interest from lawyer trust accounts to provide free civil legal aid to the poor and support improvements to the justice system.
In 2010, Kelly was recognized with a WSU Distinguished Alumni Award, having already been granted an honorary doctorate by the law school, one of three she has received from Michigan universities.
In 2009, she received the Guardian of Justice Award from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in recognition of her outstanding commitment and dedication to upholding civil rights.
In 2003, she was given the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award from the State of Israel Bonds Attorney Division.
Last year, in recognition of her retirement from the bench, Michigan Lawyers Weekly named the Justice “Woman Lawyer of the Year.”
Kelley also has received lifetime achievement awards from such organizations as the Michigan Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Appellate Section of the State Bar of Michigan, the Michigan Chapter of the American Constitution Society, the Michigan Chapter of the American Association of Matrimonial Lawyers and the Michigan Defense Trial Counsel.
Kelly grew up in Detroit, and earned her bachelor’s from Eastern Michigan University.
She spent a year studying at La Sorbonne, University of Paris, France, and earned her master’s from Middlebury College in Vermont.
She taught French language and literature in the Grosse Pointe Public Schools, at Albion College and at EMU, before attending Wayne Law. At the time, she was one of six women in a Law School class of 100.
Kelly began her legal career as an associate attorney with Dykema Gossett, and later became a partner with Dudley Patterson Maxwell Smith & Kelly in Bloomfield Hills.
She also had her own law firm before her election to the state Court of Appeals in 1988. She was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1996, and retained her seat until her final term expired on Jan. 1, 2013. She
was chief justice of the Supreme Court from 2009-11.
From 1999-2003, Kelly was co-chair of the Open Justice Commission, an organization of the State Bar devoted to making justice available to all, and she serves on the governing board of the National Consortium for Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and has been its president.
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