PHOTO BY NICK ROMANENKO
A Supreme Presence After a historic appointment to the New Jersey Supreme Court, alumni from the Rutgers Law School in Camden now hold two seats on the state’s highest court: Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis RLAW’06, above, who joined the court this summer, is the first Black woman to serve on the New Jersey Supreme Court and its third Black jurist in history. Justice Faustino J. Fernandez-Vina RLAW’81, who was sworn in to the state’s high court in 2013, is the sole Hispanic justice serving on the court and the second in the court’s history.
A Groundbreaking Appointment By Sam Starnes and James Foley
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pivotal step in the career of newly appointed New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis occurred in the summer before her second year at Rutgers Law School in Camden when she attended a campus seminar for students interested in judicial clerk positions. “Having the opportunity to be exposed to 16
judicial clerkships and learning about the benefits of working for a judge right after law school was instrumental in the path that I have taken,” Pierre-Louis said. After earning her juris doctorate with honors in 2006, Pierre-Louis launched her legal career as a clerk for state Supreme Court Associate Justice John E. Wallace Jr. She would go on to work as a federal prosecutor and
a defense lawyer with a private law firm. During her nine years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, she rose to the position of attorney-in-charge at the Trenton branch office and, later, attorney-in-charge at the Camden branch office. In both cases, she was the first Black woman to fill that role. When she returned to private practice, she did so as a partner at the firm of Montgomery
