After nearly 30 years of practicing law in the Green Mountain State, Reiber was chosen by the Governor to join the state's Supreme Court as an Associate Justice for the first of what could be many six-year terms. The Governor took things one step further when he tapped Reiber, after only one year on the bench, for the job of Chief Justice. "I didn't come here to be Chief Justice," he says. "I was very comfortable in my previous position." But he seems a natural for the job; before he joined the bench, his colleagues had developed respect for him and have been publicly quoted calling him "hard working," "fair," and "a real gentleman."

Reiber moved to Vermont when he landed a job with a law firm there in 1976. He and his wife were living in the Boston suburbs and knew they did not want to raise a family there. A die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, Reiber says he and his wife love Boston and considered moving into the city, but the Green Mountains of Vermont couldn't be beat. He developed a successful career in civil litigation, primarily representing corporations and insurance companies; later he got involved in other aspects of the legal system. He served a six-year term on the state's Judicial Nominating Board, the same board to which he later submitted his name for consideration for the Supreme Court.

In Vermont, the Governor appoints the Supreme Court Justices with the advice and consent of the Senate (also known as the confirmation process). The five Supreme Court Justices, as well as all of the state judges, come up for retention every six years. Ironically, Chief Justice Reiber is up for retention this year, the same year he was confimred by the State Senate.

He laughs, "They started the retention process before they voted my confirmation in the Senate."

The rapid ascension from lawyer to Chief Justice has provided Reiber with many challenges, all of which he relishes. He learns more every day about different parts of the courts system, state government, and issues that affect the people of his state.

Paul Reiber '70 in the chambers of the Supreme Court of Vermont, where he is the Chief Justice.

"When I was practicing law, I wasn't a criminal lawyer and I wasn't a juvenile or family-court lawyer...so I have an interest in learning more and more about it, particularly the process," says Reiber. He is also interested in the rising number of cases in the family and criminal courts. "There are as many civil suits filed in our courts today as there were in 1985," he points out, "but remarkably, the juvenile docket is up a lot, the family court docket is up a lot, the criminal docket is up a lot--these are the areas where states need to be paying attention."

His job is not the only new thing in Reiber's life. He works in a new town. He has new colleagues and is coming to terms with being the public face of Vermont's highest court. He deals with new issues in the courtroom and considers them from a new perspective. Reiber says, "That was probably one of the biggest challenges of the transition: coming from a very comfortable, stable environment where I knew everybody and had a client base, I moved into a situation that I knew very little about." Reiber also considers these challenges rare opportunities for learning.

"It's a lot of fun," he says smiling. He recalls a conversation with a good friend shortly after getting the appointment: "I said, 'I thought I was ready for a new challenge.' He said, 'At our age, we're all ready for a new challenge, but we don't all get the opportunity.'"

"One of the early lessons that I learned is that you really do create a ripple effect with the decision-making here," Reiber says about the state Supreme Court. That lesson occurred when the Justices tried to ease the backlog of criminal cases by using retired judges to hear cases. He says the effect was immediate, but not what he expected, "We started getting feedback from the State's Attorney's Association and from the Defender General about how one of our solutions would impact all of them. More judges means you need more lawyers." Solving governmental problems is more complex than what he was used to at his law firm. Reiber explains, "In the private sector, you had a discrete number of faces that you were dealing with." As a Justice, his decisions can cross state agencies, geographic regions, and socio-economic classifications.

That ripple effect has been evident throughout Reiber's life. As a boy, his family lived in the northeast and Midwest, but regularly vacationed on North Carolina's Outer Banks. He remembers how his parents would take him and his brothers to Williamsburg and Jamestown.

When it came time to go to college, he thought of Virginia--a result of those family vacations--and its link to history, something he admired. When he visited Hampden-Sydney with his parents, he remembers his mother saying, "I would be very comfortable with your going here."

He played football as a freshman, calling it "a good ice breaker," and pledged Theta Chi. He particularly remembers Bible Professor Dr. Charles Ferguson McRae who Reiber says "was a really wonderful man, very inspiring." He goes on to say, "He was a very decent person"--the kind of thing Reiber's colleagues now say about him.

As Reiber settles into his position as Vermont's Chief Justice, he realizes this will probably be his last job before retirement, and that is fine with him. "I did not take this job as a stepping stone. I have a lot to accomplish."