Passing of Justice Mary Mullarkey
We are saddened by the passing of former Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey. When establishing the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Inn of Court, we named our pupilage groups after notable Colorado lawyers that have forever impacted the Colorado legal community. Justice Mullarkey was unanimously selected as one of the people.
Justice Mary Mullarkey was born in New London Wisconsin. She graduated with a degree in mathematics from St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin in 1965. She obtained her law degree from Harvard University in 1968 and began working for the U.S. Department of Interior in the equal opportunity section. She married Tom Korson shortly afterwards and moved to Denver in 1973.
Justice Mullarkey was truly a trailblazer here in Colorado. She was one of the first women to work in the Governor’s office and worked for Governor Richard Lamm. Subsequently, she was hired by Justice Jean Dubofsky to work in the appellate division of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. She later became the Solicitor General of the State of Colorado and was selected in 1987 for her seat on the Colorado Supreme Court. She served honorably on the Colorado Supreme Court for 23 years and in 1998 became the first female Colorado Chief Justice. As Chief Justice she worked tirelessly with the General Assembly and the Judicial Department to plan and construct the Ralph Carr Judicial Center and establish childcare in connection with Court facilities across Colorado. She retired from the Colorado Supreme Court in 2010.
Justice Mullarkey Impacted on Our Members
Honorable Carol Haller shared her thoughts:
When Mary Mullarkey became your friend, it was for life. Chief Justice Mullarkey hired me in 2003 to become legal counsel for the judicial department. I was a county judge in Weld County at the time. It was a vote of confidence in me that I could transition to a statewide position. The chief, as I called her, was a visionary leader. She wanted her branch of government to be diverse, paid well, and have good working conditions. She worked hard to promote women in all areas of the judicial branch. She mentored women, she hired women and she promoted women into leadership positions. She did not stand for women being mistreated by men who ascend to power.
Chief Justice Mullarkey worked tirelessly to raise the salaries of judges and others in the judicial branch. She had multi year plans which she put forward to the legislature. In the times before term limits, the chief made important and powerful friends in both parties who championed the judicial branch due to her leadership. She met with legislators and bar leaders to put forth her ideas about compensation and the need to increase the numbers of judges. She believed judges should be their best selves all the time, and expected that for the hours a judge sat in judgment of others, they would work hard and be professional.
The chief felt strongly that the courthouses should be places of pride for the community. Because the counties were responsible for the courthouses, she worked with county commissioners to encourage them to invest in this important institution. When the building housing the supreme court and court of appeals began to fall to pieces, she brought legislators on tours of the building but also highlighted the issues of heating and cooling with its partners on the block, the Colorado History Museum. While it was up to the counties to supply the space for the judges in the 64 counties, it was up to the legislature to provide space for the appellate courts. After hearing time and time again, you can build it if you can pay for it, a response that spurred her onto creative financing instead of defeat. The building you see today for the court and the learning center, the office building filled with state agencies connected to the judicial branch, and the Colorado History Museum are the product of Mary Mullarkey, the court, and Jerry Marroney, then the state court administrator, creatively funding the construction.
While the chief was my boss, she was also my friend. We spent many happy times together talking books and movies, about our families and our desires for a better world. She inspired me with her wealth of knowledge of many subjects. She had close friends from all times of her life and career and she followed their careers and families closely, writing letters of support for jobs and judicial positions. Her philosophy about her physical limitations was that she could remain silent and miss out, or ask for help and get to participate fully. She told you what help she needed and then you got on with it. She was amazingly strong, both in will and physically, although she looked frail. She missed playing the piano, but she loved hearing her granddaughters and caregiver play the piano for her. She took what her life gave her and made the very best of it and then took what she had and used it to push others along. I am grateful for her leadership, mentorship and friendship and will miss her.
Honorable Elizabeth Weishaupl had this to say:
I met Justice Mullarkey in 1990 when I served as a Colorado Supreme Court law clerk. She was generous to a young lawyer and helped me in countless thoughtful ways. Justice Mullarkey was an advocate for excellence in the practice of law and was always available to mentor any young lawyer, including me, upon request. In her later years, she provided countless hours of advice to young lawyers and bar associations on how to be a good lawyer and judge. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and often appeared in later years with walking assistance or some form of accommodation. Here too, she was a trailblazer because in this capacity she let all of us see how a differently-abled person can do anything that they set their mind upon. She is the namesake for my pupilage group, the Mullarkey Group, and serves as an example of how we can all work together to help each other every day in both the practice of law and in becoming the best person working through adversity that one can become. She will be missed.