Judges on Their Difficult Cases

Judge Edward S. Wilson graduated from Macalester College and the University of Minnesota School of Law. He worked as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis and the Neighborhood Justice Center where he represented indigent clients in criminal court. He was appointed to the Ramsey County (Minnesota) District Court bench in 1987 and served as the presiding judge of the Criminal Team from 2008 to 2013. In 2002, Judge Wilson was nominated by the United States Department of State to serve as an international judge with the United Nations mission in Kosovo. While serving in Kosovo in 2003, he presided over cases involving war crimes, weapons trafficking, ethnically motivated crimes, organized crime and homicide. Judge Wilson retired from the bench in 2018 after serving for 30 years. He currently has senior judge status.

In 2008, Jamaican-born Gail Chang Bohr was elected Ramsey County’s first Asian American judge. She served as an international consultant with the National Center for State Courts’ Trinidad and Tobago Juvenile Court Project.  With degrees from Wellesley College and Simmons School of Social Work, Bohr had a 19+ year career as a clinical social worker in the U.S. and Hong Kong before entering law school, graduating magna cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law. She clerked for the Minnesota Supreme Court and was an associate at Faegre Baker Daniels. In 1995, she became founding executive director of Children’s Law Center of Minnesota where she trained 270+ volunteer lawyers to represent children in foster care, initiated award-winning programs and systemic reform for children in foster care.

Jennifer D. Bailey was a judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, Civil Division, in Florida. Bailey received her B.A. degree (in Journalism) from the University of Georgia in 1980 and her J.D. degree from the University of Georgia in 1983. Bailey has taught for the Florida New Judge’s College, Florida’s Advanced Judicial Studies College, Conference of Circuit Court Judges, and Florida Bar. She was the dean of the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies from 2000 to 2005. Justin Driver of the Washington Post writes of Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever Made (The New Press) “Our most distinguished judges should follow the lead of this groundbreaking volume.” In Tough Cases, judges from different kinds of courts in different parts of the country write about the case that proved most difficult for them to decide. Some of these cases received international attention such as the family case involving Elián González, the seven-year-old boy whose mother drowned trying to bring the child to the United States. Others are less well-known but equally fascinating. Relatively few judges have publicly shared the thought processes behind their decision making. Tough Cases makes for fascinating reading for everyone from armchair attorneys and fans of Law and Order to those actively involved in the legal profession who want insight into the people judging their work.