With Her Robe, Judge Hawk Takes Responsibility for Making Justice Real
When Judge Jaime Hawk was helped into her black robe on January 26, it wasn’t the first time she’d worn it. For more than 5 months, she’s performed the work of a King County Superior Court judge.
And yet the formal ceremony — called an investiture — still had the air of something significant.
So many judicial officers packed into the largest courtroom in the King County Courthouse that some of them sat in the jury box. Justice Mary I. Yu and Justice Debra L. Stephens from the Supreme Court of Washington were present, as were U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones and U.S. District Court Judge Tana Lin, nearly all 54 King County Superior Court judges, and other state and federal judges, as well as other elected officials, colleagues, family, and friends.
Investiture, from Latin, means to put on, or to dress in robe. It suggests a transition to a new role.
Welcoming Judge Hawk to her new-ish role, Justice Yu noted the role judges play in creating and maintaining “a legal process that is predictable and rule-bound, where every individual has an opportunity to be heard.”
She turned to the many judges present, sitting en banc for the first time in three years, and acknowledged the work they did to keep courts open and active during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that all people could seek justice in them.
Judge Hawk displays this same perseverance, Justice Yu said. She praised the incoming judge’s intellectual integrity and honesty, and her work with the Washington State Majority and Justice Commission. She also noted that Judge Hawk hears matters in the very same courtroom (with green stripes) that she occupied for 14 years as a King County Superior Court judge.
Trial courts, Justice Yu said, differ from courts of appeal like the Washington Supreme Court, in that they are the ones who “come face to face with the community… Only a trial court judge can make the idea of justice real.”
