Judge Terri Jamison, Candidate for Ohio State Supreme Court Justice
By: Melinda B

     Growing up in a small West Virginia town, Judge Terri Jamison worked as a coal miner, much like the first female judge in the state of Ohio, Florence E. Allen. We learned at our Women’s Issues Network’s 2022 Women’s History Month event about the grit and integrity that it took for Florence Allen and the women who have followed in her footsteps to reach levels of judgeship in a male dominated profession. Judge Jamison is no exception. She made her way from West Virginia to Columbus, Ohio, started a business of her own, and then worked her way through law school. She began her legal career as a public defender in Franklin County, Ohio. She was elected in 2012, and reelected in 2018, to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, Division of Domestic Relations and Juvenile Branch. It comes to no surprise that she has continued pushing that glass ceiling by being elected to the Tenth District Court of Appeals for the State of Ohio in 2020.

     Judge Jamison spoke to our Women’s History Month audience about fairness in the law. She is one of two Franklin County founders of the Ohio Black Judges Association, which seeks to increase diversity on the bench in our state, wherein a mere eight per cent of the judges are Black. She engages in mentoring upcoming women in the legal profession. She has been featured in documentaries and is sought after as a speaker. As her career and activities make clear, she believes that “service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.” She is a pure testament to this quotation of Marian Wright Edelman.

     By voting to elect Judge Jamison a Justice on the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio this November, we will be helping to ensure that every Ohioan has equal access to justice within our legal system.