[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 28, 2010)] [Senate] [Pages S7606-S7607] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] TRIBUTE TO CHIEF JUSTICE JEFF AMESTOY Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this summer, Marcelle and I were honored to be at the Vermont Supreme Court with former Supreme Court Justice Jeff Amestoy, his wife Susan, and their daughters. Like all Vermonters, I have respected his tenure, both as attorney general and as chief justice, as both were exemplary. While the portrait captures the image of the Jeff Amestoy his friends honor and care for, his words are what should be read by everyone who cares about our judiciary. Jeff's commitment to the law, our justice system, and our sense of what makes Vermont the State we love is in his words. They were so impressive I asked him for a copy, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Remarks of Chief Justice Jeff Amestoy (Retired) at Portrait Ceremony Vermont Supreme Court (Montpelier, VT, Aug. 13, 2010) Governor Douglas, Senator Leahy, Chief Justice Reiber, family and friends: Thank you for the honor you do me by attending this ceremony. Thank you Justice Burgess for your generous introductory remarks. Brian Burgess served as Deputy Attorney General when I was Attorney General. I doubt that either of us could have foreseen this day but here we are together again. History may not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. Thank you Kenneth McIntosh Daly--artist, rancher, and friend who has once again made the trip from California to Vermont. And thank you to my daughters Katherine, Christina, and Nancy for the unveiling. This September I begin my seventh year as a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School nearly as long as I served on the Supreme Court of Vermont. For those of you wondering how a Harvard Fellow spends his time, I can say I have spent the better part of the last two years living in the nineteenth century--more precisely in the Boston of the decade before the Civil War. It was a time when a young man working as a waiter in a coffee house, or a clerk in a clothing store, could be seized by agents of the United States Government, brought before a Judge, and under the provisions of the new Fugitive Slave Law (where no process was due), be sent back into slavery. Contrary to what I thought I knew about American history, Boston in the period leading up to the Civil War, was in the words of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., ``almost avowedly a proslavery community.'' ``It was a time'' wrote Emerson, ``when judges, bank presidents, railroad men, men of fashion, and lawyers universally all took the side of slavery.'' Well, almost all. I am interested in understanding how a society, and particularly the legal establishment of 1850s Boston, was transformed from the beginning of the decade when Daniel Webster said ``no lawyer who makes more than $40 a year is against the Fugitive Slave Law,'' to the end of the decade when lawyers literally went to war against it. My window on that time, curiously enough, opened when I saw a portrait of a lawyer of that period. So this day, for many reasons, has prompted me to look to a future as far removed from us today as the Boston of 1850. A century from now when each of us will be someone's memory, there will be, I trust, remembrances of things past. In some building if not this one, there will be a wall where portraits of forgotten Chief Justices still hang--or where an enterprising curator has retrieved old paintings and artifacts for an exhibit of our times. And on some class field trip (for those will always be with us), among a group of very bored students, there may be (if the world is lucky to still have teachers as inspiring as Mrs. Amestoy), a bright, curious student who will pause in front of this painting. She will not, of course, recognize its subject, but as she looks through the window in the portrait, she will see Mt. Mansfield. And the window of the painting will begin to open for her a window on our time. Our young historian will immerse herself in the flood of newspapers, opinions, and books of those long ago days at the beginning of the twenty-first century. On the basis of the documentation and her own insight, she will attempt to bring to life the color and passion when the social changes were so profound that even on our own time scholars characterized the upheaval as ``The Great Disruption.'' If our young scholar has had a history teacher as good as Mr. Remington, she will know she cannot rely on a single perspective. (In any event, my autobiography, The Indispensable Man, will long be out of print). But our future historian will be struck, as many historians have been, by the disproportionate impact Vermont has had on American history. She will not lack in material looking back at our time. One Vermont Senator whose unparalleled leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and pivotal endorsement of America's first African-American President, will echo down the halls of history; another whose rejection of the narrow partisanship of his party realigned the political balance of the United States Senate. A Governor whose candidacy for the Presidency altered the nature of presidential campaigns; another whose exemplary service at the beginning of the twenty-first century reflected the virtues Vermont's eighteenth century constitution calls ``absolutely necessary . . . the firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality.'' Our historian will read of an opinion of the Vermont Supreme Court that framed a debate for a nation. And of the people of Vermont who demonstrated what the result is when that debate is conducted with respect and resolved in humanity. If the Vermont of the twenty-second century is as blessed as ours, there will still be a justice system that ``speaks for principle and listens for change.'' Just as the Commission on the Future of Vermont's Justice System envisioned when on the eve of the twenty-first century a new Chief Justice wrote: ``if the future is realized in the way every member of the Commission devoutly wishes it to be, a century hence our successors will [[Page S7607]] hear these fundamental principles resonate as clearly as we hear them resonate today.'' I am optimistic about that future. How could I not be with these daughters? This portrait (assuming, of course, it is actually hung) may gather dust well into the next century. As school field trips will endure, I am confident that so too will the duty of new law clerks to conduct students on tours. To the question: ``Who is that in the painting?'' I trust that current and future clerks will always know the answer is: ``A Vermonter.'' ____________________