Law & Orange

Will T. Scott ʼ71, the retired Deputy Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, has undeniably left his footprint on the Kentucky judicial and legal system, but his long, distinguished career in public life began in his freshman year of college, when he decided to grow up.

“I grew up in Pikeville, but I went to Eastern Kentucky University for my first year of college,” remembers Scott, who also ran for Kentucky governor in 2015. “My grades were decent but not great, and I said to myself, ‘I am not ready for this. I need to grow up.’”

Growing up meant spending time as a teen in Vietnam. “I spent my year in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta. A lot is still classified. There were good times and bad times. I worked in the ‘Brown Water Navy’ (the Patrol Boats and Swift Boats that took on the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta), which was quite an experience. I was lucky enough to get back alive.”

After being awarded the Bronze Star and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, he returned to the States and decided to attend Pikeville College. His grades improved, although he still had to break rank from time to time.

“I made a lot better decisions when I got back,” he says. “I had a couple of great mentors at UPIKE who made a difference. I was a political science major and psychology minor. I know I drove a lot of the religious people there crazy because of my experience in Vietnam, but I had been commander of several units in Vietnam so I was used to making critical decisions for people.”

“I remember that during that time, my dad wanted to go fishing in Fishtrap Lake, where we spent a lot of time. I told my professor I would not be there for a test on Friday, and she said you can’t go. I told her, ‘Yes, I can’ and I did, because I had not seen my dad in some time. It was a significant decision to go with my dad at that point in my life. The dean intervened and allowed me to go.”

After UPIKE, Scott decided to go to law school. Curiously, he traveled all the way to the University of Miami.

“I was on the waiting list at UK (University of Kentucky), turned down at Harvard and Yale, and accepted at Miami,” he explains. “I was also accepted at Tulane but it taught mainly French Code law and had only a small common law program. I didn’t see waiting on a possibility at UK, so I went to Miami. They were renowned for the master’s program in tax. It is very competitive to get in, and once you get in, it’s very competitive.

“I had left Pikeville College, where everyone knew what their grade point average was, but in law school, you only get one test. It’s quite a transition and nervewracking. You have friends with your study groups, and I still have friends to this day all the way across the United States from my law school days. Miami was a fun place, and I only went to the beach one time in four years. The rest of the time, when I left campus, I spent my time in the Everglades or Okefenokee, and worked in my spare time as a bass fishing guide. But I was always coming back to the mountains.”

The Pikeville National Bank (Community Trust Bancorp, Inc.) offered him a good starting position, and he worked in the trust department with Burlin Coleman, an avid fisherman. He stayed there a year and decided he wanted to get into the courtroom.

He then embarked on his long legal career, with some notable interruptions in politics. He was a trial lawyer from 1975-1980; then an assistant commonwealth’s attorney for Pike County; then a Kentucky Circuit Court judge from 1984-1988. “I get asked to remember important cases,” he says of his career, “but they are all important to the parties, and it’s not fair for me to single one out. But I’ve been in a courtroom or two, won my share, and made a good living out of it.”

He left the circuit bench to run for Congress as a Republican, but lost the 1988 race and the 1990 race in the 7th Congressional district. “At one time in 1990, I was actually called the winner with 91 percent of the vote counted,” Scott says. “Turns out they had held back 20 precincts from the final vote. I went back to being a trial lawyer, but then I ran again in 1995 for attorney general. We got beat again. Then in 2004, I was elected to the Kentucky Supreme Court for the 7th Supreme Court District, representing 22 counties in Eastern

Will T. Scott (’71) has distinguished himself in public service and made an indelible mark on Kentucky’s judicial system.

Kentucky.” Scott became Deputy Chief Justice of the court in 2006.

Serving on the court for 11 years made him admire the Kentucky court system even more: “The Kentucky Supreme Court is unusual, but I think it works very well. It is interesting work because we have seven justices that together form the Supreme Court, but each of us is elected from only one particular geographical district. If it turns out that four of those seven justices agree, then it is a darned good decision for all of Kentucky. This system has served Kentucky well: seven distinct inputs based on their legal interests.”

For most lawyers, this would be the culmination of a distinguished legal career. But Scott felt there was more he could do to serve the people of Kentucky. He stepped down from the court in 2015 to run for governor, saying, “I’ve got these ideas in my pocket that I’ve had all these years, living this life in Kentucky, knowing the pain and problems that the families have, and I’m taking their solutions with me.”

He lost in the Republican primary but is proud of the issues he put front and center. “Stepping down from the court was the right thing to do,” he said, “and even though I lost [the race for governor], I had a lot of fun. I knew early on what the high profile cases were. I ran over funding Kentucky’s pension obligations — the state was walking around with a bucket with a hole in it. When I first started speaking about it, I knew there was going to be a political fight. In the end, I was the underfunded governor candidate and lost the race, but I had a great time with the other candidates arguing the issues. From that time, everyone started talking about the pension as a problem, and we still have to find independent funding.”

Today, he remains loyal to his Pikeville and UPIKE roots, and his legacy is still alive in Kentucky legal circles. At his retirement ceremony from the Kentucky Supreme Court, the other justices said Scott could always ease up the tension in the chamber by using his famous Kentucky aphorisms, such as “If you have to cut off the dog’s tail, you don’t do it an inch at a time.” From the time he was thrown in the Mekong Delta as a teenager, Scott has never been about taking life an inch at a time.