NC Supreme Court Justice receives McNeill Smith Award

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson was presented April 6 with the 2018 John McNeill Smith Jr. Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities Section Award.

Hudson received the award during the North Carolina Bar Association section’s annual meeting and CLE at the N.C. Bar Center in Cary.

“I consider it a very high honor to be recognized by such skilled lawyers as the constitutional rights section members,” Hudson said in a statement. “The award reflects their fine work in presenting difficult issues for us to decide; I am very grateful to them and to my outstanding law clerks who help make these decisions happen.”

Hudson, who is originally from Georgia, moved to Greensboro with her family in 1966 and earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology from Yale in 1973. She graduated from the UNC School of Law in 1976.

She then began practicing law in Raleigh and Durham prior to her election to the NC Court of Appeals in 2000. At that time, she was the first woman elected to the appellate court division in state history without first being appointed. She served in the Court of Appeals until 2006 and is currently serving her second term in the state Supreme Court. She was elected to that position in 2006 and 2014.

She previously served as the vice president of the NCBA Board of Governors in 2004-2005 and has served on the Litigation Section Council, the Appellate Rules Committee and the Bench Bar Liaison Committee.

She also served on the steering committee that founded the N.C. Association of Women Attorneys and as a member of the Board of Governors and chair of the Workers’ Compensation Section of the N.C. Advocates for Justice, which was formerly known as the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers

The McNeill Smith award honors the person who the NCBA determines demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the ideals of the U.S. Constitution and that of North Carolina by promoting awareness of the law profession and Constitutional rights, respecting the constitutional system and rule of law and for helping forward discussion and debate about constitutional issues.

John McNeill Smith Jr., who the award is named after was the founding chair of the NCBA’s Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities Section, from 1995-1997. He died in 2011.