“I’ve enjoyed the ride,” says Louis Lavorato, who on Friday, his 72nd birthday, on Friday retired as chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court after serving more than 20 years on state’s highest judicial body. the Iowa Supreme Court.

Lavorato, a son of Italian immigrants who more than fulfilled his father’s dream that he would become a lawyer, said his health would probably have allowed him to serve a few more years on the court if there wasn’t a mandatory retirement rule.

“But that’s not to say the 72-year limit is not a good thing,” he said. “I think it is a good thing, because for every one like me, you’ve probably got five or six who are in bad health. The other thing is, I feel after 20 years on this court, it’s time to let the younger folks have a chance at it. I have no regrets. … As I’ve always said since when I became a judge, I can’t think of a better way to make a living, and I felt that way all the time I was on the bench.”

The next phase of Lavorato’s career will be to serve as a senior judge to the Supreme Court, an appointment the justices recently approved.

“We have an extensive motion docket here – 4,500 to 5,000 motions a year – so I’ll be helping the court in that area,” he said. “I’ll also be on a screening panel with the justices where we decide which cases the Supreme Court will take and which we’ll funnel over to the Ccourt of Aappeals.”

Lavorato, who co-chaired the committee that planned and oversaw the construction of the new Iowa Judicial Building, has given tours of the building since it opened in 2003, and plans to continue doing so.

“I think this (the tours) are really an excellent way to educate the public,” he said. “In today’s environment, we have to educate the public about what the judiciary is all about, if we’re going to get the trust and confidence of the public. Judges are under attack today like they’ve never been before, and the only way we’re going to get the public’s trust and confidence is to educate them about what we do and what we’re all about.”

Looking ahead, Lavorato said the state court’s’ child welfare initiative is a top priority for the judicial system. He, which he recently appointed his successor, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, to head, is a top priority for the courtslead the effort.

“Working with children, helping children, is probably the most important work that we do,” he said. “We’ve got to improve our services in this area, and this child welfare initiative is a good one.”

Through that project, judges committed to juvenile law will be assigned to handle cases from beginning to end, “and we think that would improve the system greatly,” Lavorato said. “There were a number of recommendations the Pew Commission came out with regarding child welfare, and the court is committed to following those recommendations.”

Another issue that Iowa’s courts face is an “explosion” of pro se litigation – people choosing to represent themselves in court without a lawyer — in many instances because they can’t afford an attorney, Lavorato said.

“This isn’t unique to Iowa,” he said. “It’s a challenge in every state of the uUnion, and I think states are trying to do their best to facilitate this.” One way in which Iowa is addressing it has been to institute a rule allowing “unbundled” legal services, which permits lawyers to represent clients on selected aspects of a case. Before that rule, lawyers were ethically bound to represent a client throughout the entire legal process.

“As an example, in a divorce case, an attorney may now prepare a petition for divorce and file it, and the client can represent themselves from that point on,” Lavorato said. “That’s a big change, a big change.”

One of the most visible changes during Lavorato’s term on the Supreme Court was the construction of the Iowa Judicial Building. Lavorato said the architects recently told him the building, which cost $30 million to construct, would already cost twice that much to build today.

“So I think the people of the state of Iowa really got a bargain in this building,” he said. “The way I look at it, it isn’t the judges’ building; it’s the people’s building. We’re just temporary occupants.”

The Llegislature, which committed funding upfront from the state’s infrastructure fund to ensure the project could be completed, was “instrumental,” he said.

“We had a window of opportunity to do that, because as you know, we went into a financial crisis in 2000 which lasted for about five years.”

Looking back on his 44-year legal career, which included 17 years as a trial lawyer in Des Moines before being appointed as a state district court judge by Gov. Robert Ray in 1979, Lavorato can point to a number of important advancements the Iowa Judicial judicial Branch branch has made to improve the administration of justice in the state.

“Within the past two decades, we’ve moved from local funding to state funding, which I think is a good thing,” he said. “We’ve introduced and expanded [the use of] information technology by the courts, which in my mind, has expanded access to the courts by the public.”

One of the key elements of the technology updates has been the introduction of streaming video of oral arguments made before the supreme Supreme court’s Courtoral arguments on the court’s its Web site, which has been averaging a half-million hits per day. The Web site this year was named from more than 3,500 sites worldwide as one of the Top 10 Judicial Web sites by Justice Served, an alliance of court management and justice consultants serving the courts, justice agencies and technology providers.

Other significant initiatives have included a study of racial and gender bias in the Iowa courts conducted in 1993. Lavorato served as the liaison justice to the that task force conducting that study and participated in the implementation process.

“This was on the cutting edge back in 1993, and today other states are just getting around to doing this,” he said.

When aAsked what he views as the landmark decisions during his term as chief justice, Lavorato said:, “Eevery case the supreme Supreme court Court takes is important.”

“We’re establishing law by our interpretation of statutes. When we decide a case, it’s usually a case that involves an issue that has arisen for the very first time. That issue becomes precedent, becomes binding on the trial courts, so every case that we take, in my mind, is important because we’re establishing the law for the future.”

One high-profile case that does stand out in his mind is the Baby Jessica case that the Supreme Court decided in 1987, he said. In that case, the court ruled that an adoptive couple had to give up custody of their daughter to the child’s biological father.

“That garnered a lot of public interest; we received mail for months after that case,” he said.

Guiding Lavorato through every case, particularly the controversial ones, was the oath he took to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Iowa Cconstitution and to uphold the rule of law.

“So I am not to be guided by public opinion or by special interest groups’ desires, or by political views or anything like that,” he said. “That’s not my bag. It’s the Llegislature’s obligation to set policy, not the courts’. We just interpret the law; that’s our job. So my goal throughout my judicial career was to decide cases according to the rule of law. And I never looked back, because I knew I was doing the right thing.”

Lavorato, whose father was a cobbler, grew up on the South Side and graduated from Dowling Catholic High School. After serving two years in the Army, he earned an accounting degree at Drake University. He went on to Drake Law School, where he graduated first in his class in 1962.

“My dad, for some reason, had just an affinity for the law; he just loved the law,” Lavorato said. “He always commented that someday he hoped his son would become a lawyer. He got more than he bargained for, because two sons became lawyers, along with four granddaughters.” His father would live long enough to see him appointed to the supreme Supreme courtCourt; his mother was present at his swearing-in ceremony when he was sworn in as became chief justice.

“He has a great deal of pride for his family,” said David Walker, dean of the Drake Law School, who has known Lavorato for more than 25 years.

“He’s always been a real person,” Walker said. “His integrity is absolutely unimpeachable and clear, whether he’s ruling from the bench, upholding standards or just treating people decently.”