Deborah T. Poritz

Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz (Ret.) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree Magna Cum Laude from Brooklyn College in 1958, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1957. In 1958 – 1959, the Chief Justice studied English and American Literature at Columbia University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, after which she continued graduate studies at Brandeis University. She taught composition and literature at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania before leaving to enter law school in 1974.

In 1977, Chief Justice Poritz, received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. On graduation, she joined the office of the New Jersey Attorney General as a Deputy Attorney General in the Division of Law, Environmental Protection Section. She later was named Deputy Attorney General in Charge of Appeals and Chief of the Banking, Insurance and Public Securities Section. From 1986 to 1989, the Chief Justice served as Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Division of Law, supervising more than 300 attorneys for the State.

Chief Justice Poritz was appointed Chief Counsel to Governor Thomas H. Kean in 1989, serving as his principal advisor on legal and legislative matters. When Governor Kean left office in January 1990, the Chief Justice became a partner at the Princeton law firm of Jamieson, Moore, Peskin & Spicer, where she represented clients in environmental, transportation and insurance regulatory matters. She remained at Jamieson until her appointment by Governor Christine T. Whitman in January 1994 as New Jersey’s first woman Attorney General. As Attorney General, she successfully defended Megan’s Law in both the state and federal courts and chaired the task force that proposed and implemented the reorganization and reformation of the juvenile justice system in New Jersey. On July 10, 1996, she took the oath of office as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey. During her ten year tenure on the Court, she authored numerous opinions on significant issues of state and federal law and presided over the unification of the judiciary that followed legislation transferring the responsibility for court funding from the counties to the state. On October 26, 2006, she stepped down from the high court and, in December 2006, joined the law firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath as Of Counsel in the firm’s Princeton office.

Among her professional affiliations, when she was Attorney General, Chief Justice Poritz served on the Senior Environmental Forum, a national discussion group of federal, state and tribal representatives that coordinated environmental enforcement and compliance. She also held leadership positions in the National Association of Attorneys General, where she was Chair of the Juvenile Justice Task Force, Vice-Chair of the Environment and Energy Committee, and Vice-Chair of the Environment Legislative Subcommittee. She was a member of the Conference of Chief Justices from 1996 to 2006.

Chief Justice Poritz received the Alumna Award of Merit from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Alumna of Year Award from Brooklyn College. She has also been presented with the National Association of Women Judges’ Lifetime Achievement Award, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Civil Leadership Award, the Richard J. Hughes Public Service Award, the Mary Philbrook Award and the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Social Justice Award, among others.

The Chief Justice and her husband, Alan, have two sons, Mark and Jonathan, and four grandchildren, Gabriele, Raffaello, Carmina Lu, and Isaiah Zhou.