Our guest speaker this week was Sarah Taft-Carter, a RI Superior Court Judge who spoke to us about her experiences on the bench and her love of the law.
Sarah began by sharing her devotion to her family of 4 children and 6 grandchildren and the joy that all live nearby.
She graduated from URI and Sulfolk University Law School, then admitted to the RI Bar in 1982. After working as a partner in a law firm in Cranston for several years, she applied for and was appointed as an Associate Justice to the Rhode Island Superior Court in 2010 by then Governor Don Carcieri.
Her jurisdiction has, and continues to be, at the Mcgrath Judicial complex in Wakefield where she adjudicates over primarily civil cases. Her most challenging and rewarding case involved a class action suite brough by local unions over pension reform during Governor Gina Raimondo's term of office. She was deluged with filings and motions by plaintiffs along with rebuttals from the State of RI and managed to deliver with sound judgement on those difficult deliberations.
She most enjoyed and had deep respect for the importance of juries which she notes overwhelmingly “get it right” when it comes to arriving at a verdict. She counts very few instances where she felt the need to override a jury's verdict. She also appreciated the need to get back in person during the COVID era which created a backlog of cases. She expressed a commitment to fairness and balance in her approach and is wary of the influence of AI in the legal system, asserting a strong belief that judgements need to be decided on one's knowledge of case law and judicial experience rather than the output of an AI algorithm.
