By Michael Fisch
Law community
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justices Elspeth “Ellie” B. Cypher JD'86 and Serge Georges, Jr. JD'96, HLLD'21 have achieved great heights in their careers. Their decisions have statewide and often national implications. But they still make time to teach and mentor the next generation of Suffolk Law students.
From left: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justices Elspeth “Ellie” B. Cypher JD’86 and Serge Georges, Jr. JD’96, HLLD'21
For Justice Serge Georges, Jr. teaching at the Law School is a labor of love, a way of giving back to an institution that nurtured him as a law student a few decades ago. There was, he says, a warmth to everyone he met at Suffolk Law, and the sense that faculty and staff alike cared deeply about students and wanted them to succeed. "People would take the time to check in with you, when things were going well and when they weren’t," he says. "Suffolk was a place you could always come home to. I want to be there for the students in the same way the Law School was there for me."
In spite of the pandemic, he taught Evidence last fall, and in the spring, wearing a surgical mask and socially distanced, he taught two evening sections of Trial Advocacy back to back—that’s four hours in a row. He’s been teaching at the school for 22 years.
Trial Advocacy classes involving mock trials are notoriously challenging, bringing all the typical anxieties of public speaking and adding the law and legal procedure as a sprawling, sometimes unwieldy overlay.
“I think some of us going into Justice Georges’ Trial Advocacy class thought, ‘I’m not good at this and I’ll never be good at this,’” says 3L evening student Rose Mase. “But he made you realize that you could get back up after a mistake—that failing was part of the process of getting better and getting comfortable.”
At one point in the class, Georges asked Mase to examine a witness in a mock case the class was working through. “Few of us recognized the witness’s critical significance, because we were thinking in a linear way,” she says, adding that Georges helped them see the big picture. “Sometimes it’s not what a person does—it’s what they don’t do. Justice Georges got us outside that linear vision and got us to be multiplanar. And yet he was humble, the opposite of intimidating. I’ll never forget the experience.”
Justice Serge Georges, Jr.
A personal passion to drive conversations about equity in the law spurred Justice Elspeth Cypher and her teaching partner, Robert Ward JD'78, a former dean of the University of Massachusetts School of Law, to begin teaching their Suffolk Law course, Race, Gender, and the Law, back in 2018—and every year since.
"The students have been fearless in facing and discussing some very difficult topics in the law, and I have been inspired by their scholarliness, their commitment, and their ability to communicate their ideas," Cypher says.
She and Ward wanted to give students a chance to grapple with difficult and sometimes overlooked questions: Who decides what hard-to-define terms like race and gender mean in the legal context? Is the 14th Amendment living up to its promise of equal protection in areas like education, health, free speech, and property rights?
These are emotionally-wrought topics, says Suffolk Law 4L Kisha Wilson. The class ended up shaping how she approached all her other courses. "It was a revelation," she says. "Justice Cypher and Dean Ward showed us that people had to fight to make the 14th Amendment true, that equal protection wasn’t—and isn’t—just a fact. It’s not enough that it’s carved in stone or written in a book. You have to look at the impact of the law, not just the words."
Wilson figured that a Supreme Judicial Court justice would likely be difficult to approach. "But Justice Cypher is this very accessible, warm person and passionate about equity. In addition to being a brilliant legal mind, she made the space for us to share what we had learned, even though we were so new to the law," she says.
Justice Elspeth Cypher
Soon after the Race, Gender, and the Law course in 2020 wrapped up, the Black Lives Matter protests started. The course inspired Wilson and fellow classmates to create the Student Peace and Reconciliation Coalition, a group modeled after those in South Africa and Rwanda in which people sought a place to heal after generational traumas.
Wilson and her classmates involved the Suffolk community in some very difficult discussions, Ward says, "sitting with a heavy heart, but still facing up to these complex questions about equal rights and the law. Justice Cypher and I both found it extraordinary."
Spurring a communitywide dialogue
Justice Cypher met Ward when both worked at Southern New England School of Law. He shared a New Yorker article with Cypher about a civil rights pioneer, the late Pauli Murray, a Black lesbian who struggled with defining her gender decades before terms like transgender entered the lexicon.
Cypher and Ward were stunned that Murray, a legal powerhouse who shaped the legal thinking of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was so little known—and so little celebrated. They built their course around Murray’s letters to Eleanor Roosevelt and the major civil rights laws that Murray pushed forward.
"I was very happy to have the opportunity to teach at Suffolk Law," Cypher says. "I was able to attend the Law School at night, which made all of the difference for me. I have learned as I have gone through my career that my education at Suffolk was first rate. I’m grateful that Suffolk gave me a chance to teach such a unique course with Dean Ward."
Images from top: Michael J. Clarke
Reflecting on the work of Pauli Murray
Return to Table of Contents
Law community
By Katy Ibsen
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justices Elspeth “Ellie” B. Cypher JD’86 and Serge Georges, Jr. JD’96, HLLD'21
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justices Elspeth “Ellie” B. Cypher JD’86 and Serge Georges, Jr. JD'96, HLLD'21 have achieved great heights in their careers. Their decisions have statewide and often national implications. But they still make time to teach and mentor the next generation of Suffolk Law students.
For Justice Serge Georges, Jr. teaching at the Law School is a labor of love, a way of giving back to an institution that nurtured him as a law student a few decades ago. There was, he says, a warmth to everyone he met at Suffolk Law, and the sense that faculty and staff alike cared deeply about students and wanted them to succeed. "People would take the time to check in with you, when things were going well and when they weren’t," he says. "Suffolk was a place you could always come home to. I want to be there for the students in the same way the Law School was there for me."
In spite of the pandemic, he taught Evidence last fall, and in the spring, wearing a surgical mask and socially distanced, he taught two evening sections of Trial Advocacy back to back—that’s four hours in a row. He’s been teaching at the school for 22 years.
Trial Advocacy classes involving mock trials are notoriously challenging, bringing all the typical anxieties of public speaking and adding the law and legal procedure as a sprawling, sometimes unwieldy overlay.
“I think some of us going into Justice Georges’ Trial Advocacy class thought, ‘I’m not good at this and I’ll never be good at this,’” says 3L evening student Rose Mase. “But he made you realize that you could get back up after a mistake—that failing was part of the process of getting better and getting comfortable.”
At one point in the class, Georges asked Mase to examine a witness in a mock case the class was working through. “Few of us recognized the witness’s critical significance, because we were thinking in a linear way,” she says, adding that Georges helped them see the big picture. “Sometimes it’s not what a person does—it’s what they don’t do. Justice Georges got us outside that linear vision and got us to be multiplanar. And yet he was humble, the opposite of intimidating. I’ll never forget the experience.”
Justice Serge Georges, Jr.
A personal passion to drive conversations about equity in the law spurred Justice Elspeth Cypher and her teaching partner, Robert Ward JD'78, a former dean of the University of Massachusetts School of Law, to begin teaching their Suffolk Law course, Race, Gender, and the Law, back in 2018—and every year since.
"The students have been fearless in facing and discussing some very difficult topics in the law, and I have been inspired by their scholarliness, their commitment, and their ability to communicate their ideas," Cypher says.
She and Ward wanted to give students a chance to grapple with difficult and sometimes overlooked questions: Who decides what hard-to-define terms like race and gender mean in the legal context? Is the 14th Amendment living up to its promise of equal protection in areas like education, health, free speech, and property rights?
These are emotionally-wrought topics, says Suffolk Law 4L Kisha Wilson. The class ended up shaping how she approached all her other courses. "It was a revelation," she says. "Justice Cypher and Dean Ward showed us that people had to fight to make the 14th Amendment true, that equal protection wasn’t—and isn’t—just a fact. It’s not enough that it’s carved in stone or written in a book. You have to look at the impact of the law, not just the words."
Wilson figured that a Supreme Judicial Court justice would likely be difficult to approach. "But Justice Cypher is this very accessible, warm person and passionate about equity. In addition to being a brilliant legal mind, she made the space for us to share what we had learned, even though we were so new to the law," she says.
Justice Elspeth Cypher
Soon after the Race, Gender, and the Law course in 2020 wrapped up, the Black Lives Matter protests started. The course inspired Wilson and fellow classmates to create the Student Peace and Reconciliation Coalition, a group modeled after those in South Africa and Rwanda in which people sought a place to heal after generational traumas.
Wilson and her classmates involved the Suffolk community in some very difficult discussions, Ward says, "sitting with a heavy heart, but still facing up to these complex questions about equal rights and the law. Justice Cypher and I both found it extraordinary."
Spurring a communitywide dialogue
Justice Cypher met Ward when both worked at Southern New England School of Law. He shared a New Yorker article with Cypher about a civil rights pioneer, the late Pauli Murray, a Black lesbian who struggled with defining her gender decades before terms like transgender entered the lexicon.
Cypher and Ward were stunned that Murray, a legal powerhouse who shaped the legal thinking of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was so little known—and so little celebrated. They built their course around Murray’s letters to Eleanor Roosevelt and the major civil rights laws that Murray pushed forward.
"I was very happy to have the opportunity to teach at Suffolk Law," Cypher says. "I was able to attend the Law School at night, which made all of the difference for me. I have learned as I have gone through my career that my education at Suffolk was first rate. I’m grateful that Suffolk gave me a chance to teach such a unique course with Dean Ward."
Images from top: Michael J. Clarke
Reflecting on the work of Pauli Murray
Return to Table of Contents
