Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

you the compliment that you are a very normal human being.
Dimmick: I hope so! (laughing)
Hughes: Extraordinarily bright, but normal. You love the law, but you brought to the high
court all this common sense and you don’t speak in Legalese.
Dimmick: That’s what it always has to be is common sense. If you had good strong
reasoning for your point, they usually went along unless somebody had a philosophical
difference.
Hughes: Sometimes did that get pretty heated? I hope to do an interview with Judge
Utter, by the way, because you and everyone else I meet in the judiciary tell me that guy is
really an intellectual giant.
Dimmick: I think he is. … He’s very confident about his ability to analyze. But I can recall
when we’d have somebody like Judge (Charles F.) Stafford, who would say—and now
we’ve listened to oral argument — “Well, this case could go either way.” And we’d go,
“Ooooooohhhhhh!” Meaning that’s more work for the rest of us and he hasn’t got a strong
opinion that we could go against.
Hughes: Did the law clerks get to be in on this kind of stuff?
Dimmick: No, no, oh heavens no.
Hughes: Do you think there ought to be any kind of age restriction on judges?
Dimmick: I don’t see why. I don’t think it’s necessary because we have committees, and if
you’re not doing a good job they’re going to tell you, that you should be in an Alzheimer’s
unit or whatever.
Hughes: That must be the hardest thing to do — to confront a fellow judge who is losing
his or her faculties.
Dimmick: Sure. But we do have that system. And the chief judge of our district, Bob
Lasnik for instance, if I were just not competent he just wouldn’t give me a case, it’s as
simple as that. You ask him. He still thinks I’m competent. (laughs)
Hughes: I have. And he does.
Getting back to the State Supreme Court: You completed Justice Wright’s term, and
then you ran for election in 1981?
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