Judge Joyce Warren's 44-year legal career began with a suggestion from her boyfriend.
With almost no time to prepare, Warren and her boyfriend drove to Memphis on a whim to take the Law School Admission Test.
That decision, made on an impulse, was the start of a legal career that took her from Bill Clinton's attorney general's office to being the first Black woman to become a judge in Arkansas.
Now the woman who at one time thought she never wanted to go into law is set to retire Friday after 37 years on the bench. She is retiring because of a state law that requires judges who win election after the age 70 to forfeit their retirement benefits.
"I thought I would never want to retire because I absolutely love what I do," said Warren, who serves as 10th Division judge in the 6th Judicial Circuit. "This is the most difficult job ethically, emotionally, mentally -- every way you can think about it -- but I still love it."
Warren credits her husband, James "Butch" Warren, for pushing her career along. After all, it was James' idea for Joyce to take the LSATs in Memphis.
Since that time, she has accomplished many firsts in Arkansas history. Along with being the state's first female Black judge, she also was the first Black law clerk for the Arkansas Supreme Court and the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Arkansas Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, according to the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
THEY SHOOK ON IT
Warren was born in Pine Bluff in 1949 to a family of school teachers.
Just four years after the Little Rock Nine desegregated Central High School, she was one of 10 black students who helped desegregate West Side Junior High School in 1961.
Warren said she remembers the racially prejudiced abuse her white classmates heaped on her, and said her mother held her out of school after she broke her leg out of fear that her white classmates might try take advantage of her injury to hurt her.
"It was a part of life and I dealt with it, but I never thought I was inferior," Warren said. "I thought I was just as good as anybody else, smarter than a lot of them."
Married since 1972, Joyce and James' relationship began with a handshake. The two were close friends growing up. Their families hung out together and they ate lunch every day together when they were at Central High School, so when it came time for James to ask Joyce out, making the transition from friendship to romance was a bit awkward.
"Actually, when we decided to start dating each other, we didn't kiss on it," James Warren said. "We shook hands on it, because we thought it would be too strange for us to actually kiss each other at the time because we were like best friends."
After high school, both attended UALR and earned their undergraduate and law degrees. While James Warren dropped out of law school to take a job at Southwestern Bell, Joyce continued on with law school, graduating in 1976.
Even after law school, Warren wasn't convinced a career in law was for her, thinking maybe she would get her law degree and move on to something else, she said.
Warren, who studied sociology and anthropology in college, said she always had a love for children growing up as the daughter and granddaughter of elementary school teachers. But while she clerked for the Arkansas Supreme Court after law school, it was her husband's eagerness and connections that landed her the next job as a deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, who went on to become Arkansas' governor and eventually president of the United States.
James Warren, who worked on Clinton's 1976 campaign for Arkansas attorney general, approached Arkansas' top lawyer at a party on Kavanaugh Road in Little Rock and asked him to give his wife a job. While Clinton promised the job to Joyce Warren, weeks later the offer hadn't come, so James Warren made an impromptu visit to Clinton's office to remind him of his promise.
"I just walked right into his office and said, 'When are you going to keep your promise,' " James Warren said.
Clinton's job offer finally made its way to Joyce Warren.
"I like Judge Warren and Butch very much," Clinton said in a statement to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "He made a great case for her, and when we met I found Joyce not only clearly qualified, but very impressive personally. I'll always be grateful for the fine work she did in the Attorney General's office and her outstanding career afterward."
MOST IMPORTANT WORK
As reluctantly as she was to go into law, Warren said she became convinced it was her calling after becoming a judge.
In 1983, Pulaski County Judge Don Venhaus appointed her as a juvenile judge, making Warren the first Black female judge in the state's history.
She found purpose in the emotionally grueling work of juvenile law, describing it as "the most important work a judge can do."
It was often the state's poorest children and families who ended up in Warren's courtroom. Some of the children were survivors of abuse because their parents were negligent or reckless. For decades, she made life-altering decisions for children and parents, often deciding between whether or not to terminate parental rights.
"Unfortunately, there is a whole bunch of children who are homeless, hopeless, hug-less, and those are the children who frequently fall into the juvenile justice system or, as I call it, too far and too often, the juvenile injustice system," said Dorcy Corbin, a juvenile public defender.
Warren became an advocate for funding more services for families, saying she remains frustrated that many of the same problems that have afflicted families -- such a lack of access to housing, health care, education and steady wages -- are still an issue today.
"It is really inexcusable for our nation and our state to talk about the fact that we value families, that we value children, but we don't actually put our money and policies in place to reflect those values," Warren said.
Corbin, who has practiced in juvenile courts across the state, said she found Warren's courtroom refreshing given how some judges would stretch their authority to punish juveniles. In Warren's courtroom, Corbin said, she found a judge willing to listen to her arguments.
"She consistently listens to the facts and follows the law," Corbin said. "I don't feel like I'm banging my head up against the wall every time I walk out of her courtroom, which I used to feel when I was practicing in different parts of the state."
With Warren retiring at the end of the year, Corbin decided to retire as well.
"I can't even fathom having to practice law without somebody like Judge Warren on the bench every day," she said.
Warren said some of the most difficult decisions that she had to make was the decision to terminate parental rights.
Brian Welch, a juvenile law attorney, likened terminating parental rights to the "death penalty," saying those orders are among the hardest and most emotional for judges.
"I think her willingness to give parents every benefit of the doubt to try to obtain reunification in each case is obvious in the way she runs her courtroom and the way she treats those parents," Welch said. "I think having someone with that temperament and that outlook is important for both the children and families of Arkansas."
Warren said understood how many parents who found themselves in her courtroom felt. Joyce and James Warren have three sons: Jonathan, an attorney with Rainwater Holt & Sexton in Little Rock; Justin, a California-based filmmaker; and Jamie, who has had several run-ins with the law, including an eight-year prison sentence in 2016 for cocaine possession.
"Jamie made me a better judge, because had I not had the first-hand knowledge of knowing what some of the parents and guardians and custodians were talking about with difficulties with their children in particular areas, I would not have known," Warren said. "So I can sympathize because I've been there."
COMING TO AN END
Warren said she is looking forward to retirement. The covid-19 pandemic has closed her courtroom, and Warren has been working from home
While Warren is retiring because of the state law, she said she is at peace with her decision, saying she found her love for children in the law.
James is less diplomatic about her exit from the bench. A retired assistant superintendent with the Pulaski County Special School District, he called it "the most stupid law that anybody had ever passed in the history of Arkansas."
"You have to have a passion for it, you have to have a zeal for it, because as I've said earlier it is emotionally, mentally and physically exhausting," Joyce Warren said. "It is the most difficult but most important work you can do -- to help children and families."
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