Rosselle Pekelis (1938 – December 9, 2019) was an Italian-born American attorney and jurist who served as a Judge of the

Washington Supreme Court The Washington Supreme Court is the highest court in the judiciary of the U.S. state of Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the ...

. She previously served as a judge on the

King County Superior Court The Superior Court of Washington for King County (more commonly, the King County Superior Court) is the largest trial court in Washington state. It is based at the King County Courthouse, 516 Third Avenue, in downtown Seattle, Washington. It als ...

from 1981 to 1986, the Court of Appeals from 1986 to 1995, and the Supreme Court in 1995 to fill a vacancy.

Early life and education

Pekelis was born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, Italy, and raised in

Larchmont, New York Larchmont is a village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately northeast of Midtown Manhattan. The population of the village was 5,864 at the 2010 census. In February 2019, Bloomberg ranked Larc ...

, to a family of Italian Jews who escaped France during the Nazi Germany invasion of 1940. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from

Stephens College Stephens College is a private women's college in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second-oldest women's educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833, as the Columbia Female Acade ...

and a

Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...

from the

University of Missouri School of Law The University of Missouri School of Law (Mizzou Law or MU Law) is the law school of the University of Missouri. It is located on the university's main campus in Columbia, forty minutes from the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. The sc ...

Career

Pekelis was appointed to the

Dixy Lee Ray Dixy Lee Ray (September 3, 1914 – January 2, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 17th governor of Washington from 1977 to 1981. Variously described as idiosyncratic and "ridiculously smart," she was the state's first female gover ...

, and later re-elected to that position. While there, she was widely noted for a humorous incident in which she asked a police officer in her court who was chewing gum to throw it away. The officer misunderstood her and began to place his gun in the wastebasket.

Booth Gardner William Booth Gardner (August 21, 1936 – March 15, 2013) was an American politician who served as the 19th governor of Washington from 1985 to 1993. He also served as the ambassador of the GATT. A member of the Democratic Party, Gardner previ ...

appointed Pekelis to the

Washington Court of Appeals The Washington Court of Appeals is the intermediate level appellate court for the state of Washington. The court is divided into three divisions. Division I is based in Seattle, Division II is based in Tacoma, and Division III is based in Spokan ...

, a position to which she was also later re-elected; in total, she served on that court for nine years. Pekelis was appointed to the Washington Supreme Court by

Mike Lowry Michael Edward Lowry (March 8, 1939 – May 1, 2017) was an American politician who served as the 20th governor of Washington from 1993 to 1997. His political career ended abruptly following a sexual misconduct allegation made against him by h ...

in April 1995 to fill a seat left empty by the departure of Bob Utter. Major cases of hers include a 1992 Court of Appeals ruling that gender-based

peremptory challenges In American and Australian law, the right of peremptory challenge is a right in jury selection for the attorneys to reject a certain number of potential jurors without stating a reason. Other potential jurors may be challenged for cause, i.e. by ...

violated the Equal Rights Amendment to the Washington Constitution as well as the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...

, as well as a 1995 Supreme Court ruling for the adequacy of existing

implied consent Implied consent is consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather implicitly granted by a person's actions and the facts and circumstances of a particular situation (or in some cases, by a person's silence or inaction). For examp ...

warnings given to

drunken driving Drunk driving (or drink-driving in British English) is the act of driving under the influence of alcohol. A small increase in the blood alcohol content increases the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash. In the United States, alcohol is i ...

suspects before they took

breathalyzer A breathalyzer or breathalyser (a portmanteau of ''breath'' and ''analyzer/analyser'') is a device for estimating blood alcohol content (BAC), or to detect viruses or diseases from a breath sample. The name is a genericized trademark of the Br ...

tests. In her re-election race in November 1995, Pekelis faced Richard B. Sanders, a local

land use Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as settlements and semi-natural habitats such as arable fields, pastures, and managed woods. Land use by humans has a long h ...

attorney. Sanders defeated her in the election by about 53% to 47%. ''

Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...

'' columnist Terry Tang decried Sanders' campaign as "boorishly partisan" and wrote that the departure of "an excellent judge like Rosselle Pekelis" would likely fuel further distrust of the judiciary. The race was later analyzed as the start of a trend towards increasing politicization of judicial elections. After her election defeat, Pekelis joined the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission in 1996 and formed a

mediation Mediation is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party neutral assists disputing parties in resolving conflict through the use of specialized communication and negotiation techniques. All participants in mediation are ...

firm with other former area judges in 1997.

Personal life

Both her husband and ex-husband practiced law in the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

area. She had four children. Pekelis died on December 9, 2019, three months after she was diagnosed with

glioblastoma multiforme Glioblastoma, previously known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is one of the most aggressive types of cancer that begin within the brain. Initially, signs and symptoms of glioblastoma are nonspecific. They may include headaches, personality ch ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pekelis, Rosselle 1938 births 2019 deaths Italian emigrants to the United States 20th-century Italian Jews Stephens College alumni University of Missouri alumni Justices of the Washington Supreme Court Jews who emigrated to escape Nazism People from Larchmont, New York People from Seattle 20th-century American judges American people of Italian descent 20th-century American women judges Jewish American attorneys Jewish women