Judge Susanne Sedgwick held court in the Bloomington City Council chambers, which doubled as a suburban outpost of the Hennepin County municipal courts. A student who observed her in action one day wrote about the experience, starting with: “She smiled at me as I walked into the courtroom.” In the case being observed, the defendant was charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) and was testifying before a jury. “I had not had that much to drink that day… and was on my way home after stopping for dinner… and I was driving down the freeway, when the police car came up alongside of me. All of a sudden they were there, and I was outside of my car answering questions.” The prosecuting city attorney reminded the defendant that he had been weaving back and forth on the highway.
Finally, Judge Sedgewick called it a day. “Because it is so late,” Sedgwick explained to the jury, “the summary arguments by counsels will be postponed until tomorrow when everyone will be more alert and better able to absorb the conclusion of the trial.” Later, in her chambers, she instructed her court reporter to change a paragraph in the jury instructions that she would deliver the following day. She noted, “I feel the best instructions that can be given are those which most accurately reflect what the law intends, and those that can be easily understood by the jury. After all, that is what it is all about!”
Professional Life
Sedgwick graduated with honors from William Mitchell College of Law in 1956.
Her former law instructor, Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Douglas Amdahl, encouraged her to ease into practice after her first child was born at the end of her law school career by becoming a part-time volunteer with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis. She quickly became a full-time staff member when the chief staff attorney at Legal Aid, Harlan Smith, encouraged her to come on board. She served in that office from 1970 to 1974.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office, headed by future Minnesota Supreme Court Justice George Scott, recruited her to become an assistant county attorney, a position she held for two years. Later, as a trial judge, she found her county attorney practice to be “…an invaluable asset…. Without having gone through the exhausting preparation for trial and the many sleepless nights that you do as an attorney, I could not fully appreciate what goes on before me day after day,” she later said.
Although Sedgwick had not planned on becoming a Municipal Court Judge, she remarked that, when she thought some narrow-minded judge had not done justice, she thought about it off and on. With the encouragement of lawyer friends, she stood for election for the Hennepin County Municipal Court in 1970 and won, the first elected female municipal court judge in Minnesota. She was assigned to hold court in suburban Hennepin County’s conciliation court, which was normally handled by referees.
In 1974, Sedgwick was appointed by Governor Wendell Anderson to the Fourth Judicial District Court. She served in the new family court division until 1977. Though many lawyers and judges tried to avoid family court, Sedgewick found it a place to make a real difference, and “believed her decisions on the family court were some of the most important that she ever made because of the effect on the lives of the parties and their children. She especially enjoyed the litigants, noting, “Those people are the reason for my being there; they are the interesting, frustrating or happy part of the whole court process.” She moved to the regular bench of Hennepin County District Court, serving there from 1977 to 1983.
In 1983, Judge Sedgwick was appointed by Governor Rudy Perpich as one of the first six members of the newly formed Court of Appeals. In an interview at the beginning of her term on the Court of Appeals, Sedgwick noted the commitment of her colleagues to make the court responsive, including a commitment to give some kind of written opinion in every case. Sedgwick said she and Court of Appeals Chief Judge Peter Popovich rarely disagreed; but she was overruled by Popovich when she suggested a contemporary design style for the new court in favor of a more traditional atmosphere.
On the Court of Appeals, Judge Sedgwick wrote over 400 opinions, many of them in bread-and-butter criminal law cases, including a number of driving while intoxicated (DWI) arrests. For example, in State v. Leyman, 376 N.W.2d 298 (Minn. Ct. App. 1985), following a previous case, she wrote to overturn a DWI conviction where the drunken man was sitting in a stationary car and there was no evidence he planned to drive it. By contrast, in State v. Kerkhoff, 377 N.W.2d 81 (Minn. Ct. App. 1985), Sedgwick upheld a DWI conviction because, although he was not driving at the time he was arrested, Kerkhoff told the officer he had just been driving.
The next year, in State v. Kluver, 388 N.W.2d 774 (Minn. Ct. App. 1986), the defendant appealed a DWI conviction, claiming that he was not informed that he could reject the breathalyzer test. Although the breathalyzer test is mandatory in Minnesota, defendants may refuse the test if they are willing to take the criminal consequences of that refusal such as the loss of their license. In this case the officers had given Kluver the implied consent advisory which is a notice explaining this, and the court ruled this satisfied due process.
Judge Sedgwick also wrote a number of decisions in family law. In Hovland v. Hovland, 403 N.W.2d 923 (Minn. Ct. App. 1987), Judge Sedgwick refused the appeal of a non-custodial mother who sought custody of her son, upholding the trial court’s view that the mother was not able to demonstrate any significant change of circumstances or danger to the child that would permit custody to be transferred back to the mother. In Hanson v. Hanson, 403 N.W.2d 718 (1987), she held that the statutorily required equitable division of assets might include a 50-50 split in the husband’s vested retirement benefits, because of the statutory presumption that each spouse made substantial contributions to accumulate family property. In Roe v. Roe, 402 N.W.2d 829 (Minn. Ct. App. 1987), she upheld the trial court’s decision that a divorcing wife could not be given a larger share of the husband’s property based on her claim that his lies about his income in the deposition constituted fraudulent concealment and that he “wasted” their assets.
Outside her courtroom, Judge Sedgwick lobbied for abortion reform, believing that “[j]udges should take a more active role in lobbying for much needed changes in the law.” Her husband said that she never hesitated to speak out frankly, an asset for lawyers who always knew what to expect from her.
Community Involvement
Judge Sedgwick played an important role for the United Way, which she served as president of the board in 1982, while helping to reassess its strategic priorities. She also chaired committees for the Urban League, and served as honorary chair for the United Nations Year of the Child. She was involved in women’s issues, helping to found the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus and the National Association of Women Judges.
In recognition of her efforts on behalf of women, in 1985, Sedgwick was selected as Honoree of the Year by the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ). As they gave her this award, founders of NAWJ “recognized that until women achieve substantial parity with men in the legal profession and in the judiciary, there will be a need for an association devoted to advancing the interests of women judges and to addressing both their professional and personal concerns.”
She was also honored at the 1989 completion of the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force for Gender Fairness in the Courts, having served as vice-president of the Task Force. The report dedication to her noted her firsts: first woman assistant county attorney, first woman elected to a judicial position, first woman appointed to the district court, and one of the first women appointed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, along with Judge Harriet Lansing.
At William Mitchell College of Law, she taught trial advocacy. She also mentored many young women attorneys. The Task Force summarized her work by saying, “[s]ome leaders have a way of casting a shadow, and those who follow walk in that shadow. But with Sue, we always walked in her sunlight.”
Personal life
Susanne Carroll was born on June 10, 1931, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father Lynn Carroll, a lawyer struggled with alcoholism, as did her mother. As a result, Susanne spent some time in foster care. Her parents overcame their addictions, and her father left the practice of law to help found the Hazelden Center for substance abuse.
She graduated from Southwest High School in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota for her pre-law bachelor’s degree. Her father encouraged her and her sisters to take on competitive sports, and he also encouraged her to go to law school, two ventures that were uncommon for women in that era. She said that her father was responsible for instilling confidence and determination in her.
She married her husband Alfred Sedgwick on February 19, 1955, while both were finishing law school at William Mitchell. They had a daughter, Ann, during Christmas break in her senior year at Mitchell, where she graduated with honors in 1956. She was also expecting son Richard on the day she was sworn into the bar. Sedgwick’s daughters Elizabeth and Sara came quickly afterwards, so she stayed at home to raise her family right after finishing law school.
Just two months after she retired from the Court of Appeals, Sedgwick died of cancer on April 8, 1988. Sedgwick’s husband described her as follows at the Hennepin County Bar Memorial in 1989:
She did recognize that she had become a role model and like the encouragement her father had given her, she gave encouragement in good measure to young people and the not so young. Sue’s high energy level enabled her to meet both her professional responsibilities and those of wife, mother and grandmother. She loved to cook and was very good at it. She was at her best cooking Sunday dinners for family and friends. Family activity centered on sports: swimming, skating, cross-country skiing and hiking. Our grandchildren were her special joy.
References
*The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.
Annual Hennepin County Bar Memorial Session 1989, Memorial for Susanne Carroll Sedgwick (June 10, 1931 – April 8, 1988), http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/HC%201989.pdf Susanne C. Sedgwick, Judge, 1983-1988, Minnesota State Law Library Research Guide, https://mncourts.libguides.com/sedgwick
Cheri Brix, Judge Sedgwick Enjoys Her New Vocation, 14:3 The Opinion 5 (William Mitchell College of Law Student Bar Association) (May 1972), https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/the-opinion/25/
Steve Patrow, Three Judges Prepare for the Court of Appeals, 26:1 The Opinion 6 (William Mitchell College of Law Student Bar Association) (Sept. 1983), https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/the-opinion/94/
Susanne C. Sedgwick, Foreword: The Honorable Susanne C. Sedgwick, 4 Law & Ineq. 1 (1986), https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/lawineq/vol4/iss1/1
Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force for Gender Fairness in the Courts, Final Report (Sept. 1989), https://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/assets/documents/reports/Gender1.pdf