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State's appellate courts to add 'judicial twist' to WCU weekend
Western Carolina University will give the time-honored tradition of "homecoming court" a decidedly judicial twist when members of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of North Carolina visit campus Friday, Oct. 22 – a trip that coincides with WCU's 2004 homecoming celebrations.
The N.C. Court of Appeals will convene at 10 a.m. in the Grandroom of University Center, hearing arguments in two civil cases. The session is open to the public. Scheduled to hear the cases are Chief Judge John Martin and judges Doug McCullough and Robin Hudson.
While at Western, Court of Appeals judges will be joined by justices from the N.C. Supreme Court in a series of presentations for students in political science and business law classes.
The session will mark the third time that the N.C. Court of Appeals has convened on the Western campus. The court heard cases in Cullowhee in September 1995 at the request of then-Court of Appeals Judge Mark Martin, a 1985 graduate of WCU and son of former Jackson County Board of Education member Ann Martin and the late Dean Martin, a professor of marketing at Western.
After Martin's election to the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1998, he helped arrange a visit to Western by several of that court's justices, who accompanied the N.C. Court of Appeals when it returned to campus for a session in September 2001. The historic visit marked the first time that both of North Carolina's appellate courts formally visited a North Carolina university campus at the same time, and Western remains the only N.C. university to have hosted both courts.
The Supreme Court, which is permitted under state law to conduct sessions of court only in Raleigh and Edenton, is composed of seven justices who are elected for eight-year terms. With the resignation of Justice Bob Orr in July, one of those seven seats is currently vacant and will be filled following the November election.
The N.C. Court of Appeals comprises 15 judges, elected for eight-year terms, who sit in three-judge panels. The court sits primarily in Raleigh but meets in other places across the state as authorized by the Supreme Court.
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