Changing Times

Barbara Lenk has won confirmation for a seat on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  Justice Lenk becomes the first openly gay or lesbian person to sit on Massachusetts’s highest court.  Justice Lenk’s biography, featured below, is edited from the Massachusetts Appeals Court’s website where she sat as a judge prior to being elevated to the Supreme Judicial Court:

Associate Justice Barbara A. Lenk was born in Queens, New York.  She received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Fordham University in 1972;  a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Yale University in 1978;  and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979.  She began her legal career in 1979 at the Boston law firm of Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer where her practice specialized in First Amendment matters.  In 1993, she was appointed to the Superior Court, where she served until 1995, when she was appointed to the Appeals Court.  Justice Lenk has served on the Board of Directors of the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association;  as Chair of the Board of Editors of the Boston Bar Journal;  and as a member of the Judicial Administration Council of the Massachusetts Bar Association.  She currently serves as a Trustee of Western New England College and as a member of the Boston Inn of Court.

And, she's a lesbian.  This openness of Justice Lenk's is a sure sign of openness of the populous.  In the days before the Stonewall Riots in June of 1969, the appointment of an openly gay judge was unthinkable.  But today, thoughts are different.  Congratulations Justice Lenk.