Judges talk favorites, heroes

bniolet — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:59:09 -0400

N.C. Supreme Court candidates Bob Edmunds and Suzanne Reynolds stayed away from partisan messages or hot-button social issues at a forum Monday night.

So how did those attending get a sense of the candidates they would be voting for? By asking a lot of questions about personal favorites, Dan Kane reports.

Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Willis Whichard, the moderator, even had some fun with it, asking the candidates if the court survived a nuclear attack, what one book would they each bring?

Reynolds said she'd bring a law school staple: "The Nature of the Judicial Process" by Benjamin Cardozo, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who died in 1938. Edmunds said he'd bring a book of Alfred Tennyson's poetry.

Whichard then asked that if the laws of nature had been suspended by the attack and they could talk to any one person (he excluded Jesus and the Apostles), who would that be?

Edmunds said Abraham Lincoln; Reynolds said Eleanor Roosevelt.

Edmunds, 59, a Greensboro Republican, is seeking his second, eight-year term on the court. He is a former N.C. Court of Appeals judge and a former federal prosecutor.

Reynolds, 59, a Winston-Salem Democrat, is making her first run for political office. She has been a law professor at Wake Forest University for 27 years and is a recognized expert on family law.

More after the jump.