It would have been easy for those attending Tuesday’s Columbus Rotary Club’s meeting to imagine Bill Waller Jr. following in his father’s footsteps.
Waller, the son of Mississippi’s 56th governor, is now in his 21st year as a justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court, the last 10 as chief justice. But his personality betrays the kind of “Aw, shucks” populism that swept his father into office in 1971.
Before settling into his speech Tuesday, Waller ingratiated himself with his audience. In a span of a few minutes, he had rattled off his associations with the Rotarians. It almost seemed as if everyone in the room was either a lawyer with whom he had worked or a relative of some sort.
“As I was coming in the room, I overheard (circuit court judge) Lee Howard talking with someone,” Waller said. “The man asked Howard what it was (justices) do on the Supreme Court. Lee told him, ‘It’s something like this: They go on the battlefield and shoot all the survivors.'”
Waller’s father, the first Bill Waller, served as Mississippi’s governor from 1972-76, one of the handful of progressives to ever occupy the governor’s mansion. Prior to that, he was best known as the district attorney who unsuccessfully prosecuted the killer of Civil Rights icon Medgar Evers.
Riding the strength of a coalition of rural whites and black voters, Waller upset Lt. Gov. Charles Sullivan to win the Democratic primary and then, in something of an irony, defeated Medgar Evers’ brother, Independent Charles Evers, in the general election.
His single term was noted for his appointments of African Americans to administrative positions and the abolition of the Sovereignty Commission, which was used to enforce Jim Crow rule in the state.
While Bill Waller is not like his father in some ways – the son is a Republican and chose not to follow his father’s path into politics – there is a populist vein that runs through his tenure on the state’s highest court, particularly in his 10 years as chief justice.
Justice Waller spent his time Tuesday talking about three primary initiatives, all of which have made the state’s judicial system more accessible and equitable to all Mississippians, especially those for whom the justice system may seem more like an adversary than a friend.
“The first initiative is our electronic court system,” he said. “It’s the same system used throughout the country in federal courts. The benefit of that is … the system comes at no cost to the taxpayer. The public has access to the system at no charge, so it’s something that every citizen benefits from.”
The system also creates “real time” filings on court rulings, a benefit to law enforcement, attorneys and judges that makes the state’s courts more efficient and accessible, he said.
Waller said the second initiative is called “Access to Justice,” a program that provides clinics to citizens on how to navigate the court system, which can be especially confusing for low-income citizens.
“All lawyers have an ethical duty to make sure the courthouse is open to all citizens,” Waller said. “We have a statewide initiate to have a clinics in all our counties, where we ask attorneys to assist low-income people on a variety of areas. It might be to help with guardianships, where a grandmother taking care of a child can gain legal status so she can put the child in school or take the child to the doctor. There are a variety of ways that the courts are there for people to help them. But in many cases, people do not know about it.”
Finally, Waller praised the impact of the state’s drug court system.
“Nothing has impacted lives and changed people as much as this,” Waller said. “We attempt to address the underlying problems that may have led to the crime, primarily drug and alcohol issues. We have 3,600 people in the program, people who are in the program instead of being sent to prison. That’s saved us more than $36 million in the costs for incarcerations, but even more important, it’s changed lives. You can’t really put a cost estimate on that.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.