VIDEO: Justice’s modest roots nurture successful legal career

By Troy Shelton

From humble beginnings, Justice Tamara Barringer of the North Carolina Supreme Court has become an important force in state government.

Barringer grew up in rural Cleveland County. After her family’s uninsured tobacco crop went up in flames, Barringer’s father began working at a local textile plant, and the family moved into a mobile home. Later, they would upgrade to a three-bedroom home, which, to the young Barringer, felt like a “mansion.” Although of modest means, Barringer’s parents ensured that she and her three sisters grew up in a secure home with clean clothes, food to eat and a bedtime story to end each day. Her parents, she recalls, were motivated by a belief in “family, faith and the goodness of people.”

Those principles worked out well for the daughters. Barringer became the first of the four to go to college. She went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and each of her sisters followed her.

It was during college that Barringer met the man who would become her husband and future law partner, Brent Barringer. They tied the knot five years later, while both were at UNC for law school.

After graduation, Tamara Barringer got a “dream job” at Poyner Spruill as a transactional tax lawyer. Meanwhile, Brent hung a shingle. Three years into her work at Poyner, Brent was looking for a partner to help with his firm, and Tamara wanted that new hire to be her. They took a “leap of faith” together. Business took off.

Like Tamara, Brent also had modest roots. After his father died in the Marine Corps when he was an infant, Brent was reared by his mother and grandparents. For both Barringers, the common denominators were “faith and family.”

That commonality led them to take another leap together. After encouragement from friends, the Barringers became therapeutic foster parents, a decision that would chart the family’s course for years to come. A decade later, the couple had adopted all three of their children through relationships that started as foster placements.

Entry into politics

When they stopped fostering, Tamara began to consider public office to improve the foster system.

That led her to run for the General Assembly in 2012, becoming Sen. Barringer. During her more than six years in the legislature, Barringer scored new funding for the foster care system and led important changes to help children. She also sponsored the Business Court Modernization Act, restructuring that court into what litigators have come to know today.

While in the legislature, Barringer also worked full time as a clinical professor at the Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. She taught legal courses, including transactional law for accountants, business associations, and securities regulation. She also developed and continues to teach a mentorship program for first-generation college students, like she once was. Even today, Barringer still teaches several classes each semester, describing the work as one of her greatest loves.

Barringer lost her legislative seat in 2018, but still interested in public service, she turned her attention to the Supreme Court. “I had practiced law, I had taught law, I had legislated law, but I had never judged law. I wanted to have that challenge.” Drawing on her work as a legislator, Barringer also was keen to work on Business Court and termination of parental rights cases, over which the Supreme Court then had exclusive appellate jurisdiction.

In the 2020 election, she unseated Justice Mark Davis. True to her past work in the legislature, she began forming relationships with her new colleagues. Throughout her time on the court, she counts Chief Justice Paul Newby as an important mentor. She also described Justice Mike Morgan as an “absolute master of procedure” because of the different courts he has served on. When she and Morgan would disagree in court conferences, she would often meet in his chambers to better understand his thinking, which would sometimes lead her to change her mind. She also described Justice Sam Ervin, her former colleague, as an important mentor. He always told her that the court’s work “is a team sport, and he lived that.”

Barringer explained that the court has a “deep bench” with “varied experience.” There are and have been justices with unique areas of expertise, like constitutional law, criminal law, insurance — “you name it.”

Judicial philosophy

As for her judicial philosophy, Barringer describes herself as committed to judicial restraint. She calls herself a “soft textualist. I don’t do it to the extreme, but words have meaning. I respect the people and the General Assembly who were voted for by the people of this state. They create law, and it matters.” Despite being a former legislator, Barringer sees little value in the use of legislative history, describing it as a “can of worms.”

Barringer isn’t quick to write separate opinions, preferring to negotiate with her colleagues. “Rather than fire up my pen, I can go and see if we can’t work something out so that we can all come to something that we’re comfortable with.” Even during her time in the General Assembly, very few of the bills she sponsored drew opposition from either side of the aisle.

Due to her business background, Barringer has a special interest in Business Court cases. She serves as the liaison between the courts. One thing she’s heard from the Business Court is the need to control interlocutory appeals because they hold up cases and hurt businesses needing a timely resolution. She has recently directed her attention to ensuring appellate jurisdiction is proper in those cases.

She also is a big fan of the Business Court’s work. When she modernized the court at the legislature, the new law required its judges to issue written opinions, which she now reviews. Sometimes, Barringer votes to per curiam affirm those opinions. When she votes that way, she explains, she’s indicating that, in her view, “The order can’t be improved on. It nailed it.”

We also discussed the future of the Supreme Court’s docket with the elimination of dissent-based appeals. Even though a dissent at the Court of Appeals won’t continue to punch a ticket to the Supreme Court, Barringer believes that thoughtful dissenting opinions at the state’s intermediate appellate court will indicate that Supreme Court review might be warranted through the discretionary review process.

Barringer finds “tremendous value in what the Court of Appeals does. I want to read their opinions. It also informs us of their precedent.” She believes that separate concurring and dissenting opinions at that court can help her get a better sense of when the Supreme Court should intervene. That’s also part of the reason that she is “generally opposed” to bypassing the Court of Appeals “on an ad hoc basis.”

Now about halfway through her first term on the bench, Barringer brings with her the same focus and determination that has carried her throughout her professional life, and in her now 13th year of public service.

Troy Shelton is a board-certified appellate specialist practicing with The Dowling Firm in Raleigh. Email him at [email protected].