SUPREME COURT OF STATE MONTANA AUDITOR #6
JIM SHEA
CURRENT OCCUPATION: Supreme Court Justice CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: www.sheaforjustice.com
Arrow-Circle-Right Briefly introduce yourself. I’m a fourth generation Montanan. I was born and raised in Butte, the youngest child in a large Irish Catholic family. After graduating from Central Catholic, I went to the University of Montana for both college and law school. My mom was widowed when I was still a kid, and I worked my way through college with work study jobs and bartending during the school year, and manual labor (sewer worker, demolition, asphalt) during the summers. After law school, I clerked for Chief Judge Hatfield at the federal court in Great Falls. My wife and I then moved to Portland so she could go to graduate school, after which we returned home to Montana. I practiced civil and criminal law until I was appointed Workers’ Compensation Judge in 2005. I served in that position until I was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2014. My wife Kathy and I met in college and married in 1989. We have two incredible daughters, Kate and Moira.
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MONTANA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Arrow-Circle-Right What issue(s) inspired your run for this office? When this seat on the Court became vacant in 2014, I had been Workers’ Compensation Judge for over eight years, and I had developed a reputation on both sides as a fair judge who just always tried to reach the correct result. Over 90% of my decisions had been affirmed by the Supreme Court, and the vast majority of those had been affirmed unanimously. Although I loved my job at the Work Comp Court, I was encouraged to run by lawyers on all sides: lawyers who represented insurance companies, employers, and injured workers. I prayed about it, had some long discussions with my family, and ultimately decided I was up for this new challenge. I have never regretted my decision to seek a seat on the Supreme Court. It has been my highest honor to serve the people of Montana on the Supreme Court and I have truly enjoyed working with all of my colleagues. Arrow-Circle-Right Explain how the Court should reach the appropriate balance between following precedent and allowing for flexibility in the law. Our standard for overturning precedent is only when a prior decision is “manifestly wrong. My opinion as to when overturning precedent is appropriate is best summed up in my dissenting opinion in State v. Running Wolf, 2020 MT 24, which I encourage you to read. Running Wolf was a rare 4-3 decision, in which Justices Baker, Rice, and myself dissented from the Court’s holding that overturned several of our previous decisions interpreting the persistent felony offender statute. While acknowledging that the majority’s
interpretation of the statute was “an entirely reasonable” one, I dissented because it “[was] not ... this Court’s interpretation prior to today, and since 1985.” Although it is critically important that a court be willing to overturn a decision that is “manifestly wrong”—Brown v. Board of Education being the classic example—the effective functioning of our system requires that the citizens be able to rely on the continuity and consistency of the Supreme Court. Arrow-Circle-Right To what extent do you believe that a judge should or should not defer to the actions of the legislature? Early in my tenure on the Court, I was confronted by a friend who expressed his disappointment that I had voted to uphold the constitutionality of a statute he knew I privately disagreed with. When he asked why, I answered simply, “It’s my job to decide whether or not a law is constitutional, not whether or not I like it.” I am a big believer that the separation of powers functions correctly when each branch stays in its own lane. We have a system for enacting legislation, and it doesn’t involve the judiciary. The Court’s function is to apply the law as written by the legislature, and we have very clearly defined parameters for doing so. We apply the plain statutory language as written, not how we would have liked it to be written. If the language is subject to interpretation, we look at the legislative history to endeavor to apply the law as the legislature intended. Only in those instances in which a statute is unconstitutional is it appropriate to invalidate it on those grounds. stop
