By Karen Feldscher
Photography by Jared Leeds

Presiding over criminal cases at Boston's Suffolk Superior Court, Margot Botsford saw the same thing day after day: dozens of young adults, appearing before her as defendants or victims, "already on their way to having no future," she says.

The clockwork regularity was downright depressing.

"It was enough," says Botsford, L'73, who has been a Superior Court associate justice since 1989, "to make you want to figure out how to help kids who live in the city follow other paths earlier on, and thereby have a chance in life."

As a judge, though, she felt she could do only so much. So, in 2001, she decided to spend a seven-month sabbatical volunteering in the schools.

"She wanted to know more about how the Boston public schools worked," says Deanna Jantzen, LA'75, MPA'76, L'95, director of Northeastern's Board of Trustees office and assistant university counsel, who has worked with Botsford, a university trustee, on Northeastern-related issues. "She immersed herself in it because it was an intellectual and emotional challenge," Jantzen says. "She wanted to make sure the kids were getting a good education."

Botsford's deep interest in education-not to mention her willingness to take on tough problems-also led to her being chosen to oversee one of the most challenging cases to come before the Superior Court in recent years, one aimed at determining fair funding formulas for public schools across the Commonwealth.

Nor was that the only blockbuster case to come Botsford's way. Less than a year and a half ago, she issued an important decision involving a long-contested runway at Logan International.

Colleagues say it's no accident Botsford was at the helm of these two trials.

"The reason Margot Botsford handled these cases is because everybody on the court realizes that she is the smartest, certainly the hardest-working, and probably one of the most thoughtful judges on the court," says Carol Ball, L'76, a friend and fellow Superior Court associate justice.

"She is la creme de la creme of the Superior Court."

High profile, high marks

In the Massachusetts judicial system, the Superior Court is the highest-level trial court. It hears both criminal and civil cases, includes an appellate division, and is the court in which grand juries are convened.

According to the thumbnail description on the Massachusetts Bar Association website, at , it's "where eye-catching cases are likely to be tried: e.g., murder, rape, conspiracy, jousts between business interests, trademark disputes, product liability, medical malpractice, and labor controversies."

Seventy-six Superior Court justices are divided among the state's fourteen counties. Suffolk Superior Court, for instance-where Botsford sits-has Boston as its jurisdiction, along with Winthrop, Chelsea, and Revere.

It's a high-profile job, and colleagues say Botsford devotes boundless attention to every detail, even the court committees. "If there's a meeting, she'll go to it," says fellow associate justice Catherine White, L'72.

"And she's always thinking she's not doing enough," adds Nonnie Burnes, L'78, who, along with Botsford, Ball, and White, rounds out a quartet of busy women who serve as both Superior Court associate justices and Northeastern trustees.

White notes that Botsford remembers prodigious amounts of detail, easily recalling cases relevant to particular issues, even their citations-a valuable skill for a judge. "She just has an incredible brain," White says.

In addition to Botsford's impressive work ethic-Burnes says there are "legendary stories about Margot working into the wee hours of the night on opinions"-she gets uniform praise for being a great friend.

"If you have a concern or problem," White says, "she's the first person to ask if everything's okay."

Despite her friend's accomplishments and reputation, Ball says that Botsford is "ridiculously self-effacing. If I were her, I'd have the biggest head of anyone. But she doesn't."

True to form, in talking about her career, Botsford seems anything but wowed by her achievements. On the contrary, she's remarkably, and refreshingly, unassuming. She says that being a judge is great work, intellectually stimulating, and she's lucky to have such an amazing job.

And she freely admits that the first time she put on her judicial robes and approached the bench, she was petrified.

Behind the big calls

"I didn't know what I was doing," she says. "It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There were three chairs on the bench, because the week before there'd been a medical malpractice tribunal with seating for a judge, a doctor, and a lawyer. The first chair was a little chair, so that's where I sat."

Fast-forward sixteen years, and the picture changes. The fifty-seven-year-old judge doesn't get nervous anymore when she walks to the bench. Now her nerves kick in at different times, like when a jury is about to announce its verdict, because she knows how much the decision matters to both sides.

One thing is for sure: She likes making the big rulings. Not that she doesn't spend her share of sleepless nights worrying about whether she's made the right ones. But, in her view, the fretting is an easy price to pay, because the job is so close to perfect.

"There are people-a lot of lawyers-who really enjoy advocating on behalf of a person, or a cause, or a case, and trying to persuade the decision maker," she says. "It's not that I don't enjoy that. It's just that I would rather be the decision maker."

For Botsford, the joy comes in thoroughly examining a legal problem, turning it over and over in her mind like a gem until she can see all the facets. "Trying to solve whatever problem a case has is a very challenging and rewarding experience," she explains.Former colleague Maria Krokidas (who formed a law firm with Botsford and Stephen Rosenfeld-then Botsford's colleague, now her husband-in 1979) says Botsford "truly enjoys the mind puzzle of being a judge. And because she's so good, she gets great cases. And she always rises to the occasion."

Indeed, Botsford comes across as particularly well-suited to solving thorny problems. She's smart, straightforward, and reasonable. And clearly fascinated with the nitty-gritty of her work.

Take, for example, the nearly two years she spent wrestling with how to fairly fund Massachusetts public schools. In June 2002, then Superior Court chief justice Suzanne DelVecchio, who knew Botsford had just finished an education-focused sabbatical, asked her to get involved with a major education case, Hancock v. Driscoll. Some of the state's poorer school districts had filed a complaint alleging that state funding formulas prevented them from providing an adequate education for the children in their communities.

Botsford's charge: Produce a fact-finding report and recommendations on the matter for the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), the state's highest court.

First she spent several months in preparatory hearings and conferences. Then she conducted seventy-eight days of trial, listening to 114 witnesses and poring over more than a thousand documents.

By last April, Botsford had completed a 350-page report on the case. Burnes suspects it may be the longest opinion ever issued by the Superior Court.

It made several recommendations to the SJC: That, given current education mandates, Massachusetts should reexamine its formula for funding public schools. That local school management and leadership should be improved. And that the state should provide high-quality preschool programs for more children as well as more funding for special education.

"In every one of these [poorer] districts," Botsford wrote in her executive summary, "the students are not receiving the level of education that the Commonwealth has a constitutional duty to provide."

Many observers expected the SJC to rule in favor of the Hancock plaintiffs, a decision that could have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, in a 5-2 ruling issued in mid-February, the high court dismissed the case.

The SJC justices didn't disagree with Botsford's findings-indeed, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall's majority opinion stated that "no one . . . disputes that serious inadequacies in public education remain." However, the high court determined that the legislature and the executive branch were making steady progress in improving public education, and should continue to do so without undue interference from the courts.

School funding woes

Fair-education advocates were clearly disappointed by the SJC's decision. The mood was different last year when Botsford first issued her report. Joseph Bage, superintendent for the public school system in Brockton, one of the plaintiff districts in the case, had proclaimed himself "elated."

Norma Shapiro, president of the Council for Fair School Finance and an American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts lobbyist, had praised Botsford's "powerful description of the ways in which children in poorer school districts, especially those with learning disabilities [or] limited English proficiency, racial and ethnic minorities, and those from low-income circumstances, are stymied by inadequate programs and insufficient funds."

But state officials had been less pleased by Botsford's conclusions. They suggested that local school leadership, perhaps more than state funding, plays a significant role in education successes and failures. And they indicated their reluctance to impose new taxes on what they saw as an already overtaxed electorate.

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has long believed additional dollars aren't the only answer. "Just . . . sending more money to the same people to do the same things is not going to solve our problems," he said last month after the SJC ruling was announced.

Public school funding is a tricky issue in the Commonwealth, Botsford says. Funding schemes are largely dependent on property taxes, so poorer districts have tended to suffer. Sometimes they complain-as they did in Hancock v. Driscoll-that the state isn't doing enough to level the playing field.

The issue first wound up in the courts in the late 1970s. By 1993, a landmark suit had been filed on behalf of children from sixteen different school districts, declaring they were receiving an inadequate education. In response, the SJC ruled that the state constitution requires the Commonwealth to provide an adequate education for all children in its public schools-and that it was failing to do so.

Three days after the SJC's decision, the state legislature-having "seen the handwriting on the wall," says Botsford-passed the Education Reform Act, which restructured the formula by which state funds were doled out to local districts.

"It very much changed the way school funding was distributed," Botsford says. "Pre­nineteen ninety-three, the state was playing an increasing role in [seeing that funds were distributed fairly], but it was ad hoc and not very well done."

The plaintiffs in the 1993 case agreed to wait and see whether things improved. Meanwhile, the state spent billions more on public education and instituted MCAS (short for Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) testing to hold the schools accountable for student achievement.

Six years later, in 1999, the same school districts, as well as some new ones, were back in court. The situation had improved, they said. But not enough.

For three years, the SJC prodded the disputing parties to reach an agreement. Finally, the high court referred the case to the Superior Court for the finding of facts and evidence, as well as recommendations on how to remedy the situation. Botsford was chosen to oversee the mammoth task.

By then, nineteen communities had signed on as plaintiffs. To streamline the work, Botsford suggested the plaintiffs pick a handful of communities to represent all the others. Brockton, Lowell, Springfield, and Winchendon were chosen.

"The trial was largely factual evidence about these four communities," says Botsford. "And an equal or greater amount of the trial was expert testimony on a whole variety of issues. There was also a lot of evidence from the defendants-from officials from the state Department of Education-whose job it is to evaluate the schools."

Addressing the complexities

In weighing how to provide a solid public education to all children, Botsford was struck by the daunting, complicated nature of the effort, both in Massachusetts and across the nation.

"There are many reasons, frankly, to be discouraged about it," she said several weeks before the SJC decision was announced. "This litigation is going on all over the country. But it's a very sobering record, with not a lot of successes."

She explains: "In many instances, courts have declared that the state constitution requires the state to play an affirmative role in providing and funding local education. Then the court tells the legislature to come up with the money to do that. Then the legislature balks. And ultimately, in a number of states, the court has basically said, ‘This is too much of a political question, and we can't go any further.' And they dismiss the case. It's very depressing."

Asked if she thinks the courts should be more forceful in this arena, Botsford sighs. "Well, I don't know," she says. "It's very hard."

She perks up, however, when describing the complexities of the issue.

"You've got two problems," she says. "You've got the problem of the relationship between the court and the legislature-the separation of powers problem. Then you've got the other problem, traditional in this country, that public education is fundamentally a local enterprise. So you have the court sort of forcing the state to do something. But in the end, although the localities want more money, I think it's fair to say there's also a certain amount of resistance to state mandates about how that money is going to be used. And that's not even talking about the federal requirements.

"Quite apart from the politics and the funding," she goes on, "is that there are so many variables in play. You've got funding issues, no question. But you've also got teacher-quality issues, parent issues, children's background issues, and management issues. The schools can only do so much."

It's no wonder Botsford can outline the intricacies so neatly, given how much time she's spent trying to understand them. After listening to hours of testimony and reading thousands of pages of documents, Botsford spent the first two months of 2004 working solely on the report. She admits she was nervous about getting it done, having never written anything that long before.

In March, feeling guilty about not attending to her other work, she returned to her normal court routine. With the help of her law clerk, who summarized much of the court testimony, and by working nights and weekends for many months, she finished the report by April.

Last August, more than forty-five statewide groups and forty-seven state legislators filed "friend of the court" briefs on behalf of the student plaintiffs as the case headed back to the SJC. At the time, Michael Weisman, the lead plaintiffs' attorney, cited Botsford's "careful and extensive findings and recommendations."

Even after the SJC's dismissal of the Hancock case, Weisman sounded an upbeat note with his remarks to the press: "The only thing the legislature ought to take away from [the] decision," he said, "is that the court is going to give them some time to get the job done."

"A terrible teacher"

It's apropos Botsford became so knowledgeable about the dilemmas of providing a good public-school education. At one point in her life, she'd thought about becoming a teacher herself.

The 1969 Barnard College graduate spent six weeks at Harvard's School of Education right after college. But doing practice teaching in a summer school program for Newton kids convinced her she was "a terrible teacher," she says, and she dropped out.

That winter, Botsford took a number of law-related volunteer jobs to see if she liked legal work-and she did. Accepted by several Boston-area law schools, including Harvard, Botsford decided to enroll at Northeastern, lured by its small size and the co-op program.

"Co-op was very helpful," she says. "At one point, I thought I was interested in legal services. But after one co-op quarter doing that, I realized it wasn't for me."

Finally, on co-op as a law clerk for SJC judge Francis Quirico, L'32, Botsford found her niche. "I loved it," she says of her introduction to life on the bench. "The legal issues were interesting, and the idea of being in a position to decide these legal issues, for me, was very heady. And my judge was terrific."

Botsford spent the next decade and a half in jobs she felt would help her earn her robes. She was an associate at the law firm Hill & Barlow; an assistant attorney general for Massachusetts (including a stint as chief of the opinions division); a partner at Rosenfeld, Botsford & Krokidas; an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, serving as chief of the appeals and training bureau; a consultant to the Office of the State Attorney for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in Miami; and, once again, an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, this time as chief of the family and community crimes bureau.

In 1988, she finally applied to become a judge in Massachusetts. The judicial nominating committee recommended her as a top candidate for a post on the Superior Court. And she got the job.

Her interest in education, which has never flagged, still finds expression in many areas of her life. As a Northeastern trustee, she has spent the past two years on what Jantzen calls the "thankless but very important work" of chairing the trustees' special committee on graduate education.

"Trying to get your arms around graduate education's policies, programs, and structures is like trying to hug an amoeba," Jantzen says. "But Judge Botsford is very thoughtful about all this and takes it very seriously. She works very hard to get at the underlying issues, and has really helped focus the administration on the important issues regarding the role of graduate education in the university."

Botsford delved just as deeply during the sabbatical she spent in the Boston public schools. Working with Citizen Schools, a nonprofit organization that promotes after-school activities, she helped expand its services, which originally targeted fourth- to seventh-graders, to include eighth-graders as well. The goal was "a more intensive, longer program that would help them make a better transition to high school and, hopefully, college," she says.

She even helped recruit local lawyers to serve as volunteer writing coaches for the kids. "We originally got six or seven firms for that first year, and the program has grown every year since then," she says.

Botsford also took it upon herself to visit roughly twenty Boston high schools.

"It was fascinating to see the schools, and meet the headmasters and staff," she says. "I got the sense there were a lot of really dedicated headmasters with energy and commitment, and they really had a struggle on their hands. I also got a sense of the quite profound differences among the various high schools."

In addition, Botsford volunteered at Brookline High School, helping with a program aimed at boosting achievement among African-American students.

Cleared for takeoff

In the months before Botsford issued her report on school funding, another hot-button issue got her name in the news. In November 2003, she modified a longstanding injunction against adding a fifth runway to Logan International Airport, thereby clearing the way for construction.

It was a controversial decision. Residents living near the airport had fought a bitter fight to prevent the Massachusetts Port Authority from building the new runway, contending they were already dealing with overwhelming levels of noise and pollution.

The existing injunction dated back to 1974, when Massport had begun construction on a new runway without conducting a required environmental impact report. Although the port authority contended it should have been exempt from having to produce such a report, a judge ordered the injunction be imposed.

By the early 1990s, hoping to offset existing and projected flight delays at Logan, Massport revived the idea of a fifth runway. Working with the federal and state governments, the port authority completed the necessary environmental reports, and also agreed to use the new runway only for turboprop planes and small jets, and only in certain wind conditions that prevented the use of other runways.

Botsford ruled that, given such limits, as well as the projected increase in airport traffic, it was time to modify the 1974 injunction. The decision didn't please runway opponents. A representative of Communities Against Runway Expansion said of Massport, "They are just trying to jam more concrete into East Boston."

Still, opponents recognized that Botsford's decision-which modified the injunction but kept it in place-would keep the court involved in Massport's plans. It also required Massport to use incentives to shift more air traffic to off-peak hours; encourage greater use of regional airports; and provide soundproofing to homes, schools, and other institutions near the airport.

Botsford knows her decision displeased the towns that abut Logan. And yet, she says, the decision to build the airport so close to residences was made, for better or worse, a long time ago. At this point, compromises must be made.

"For air travelers, the location of Logan Airport is fabulous," she says. "But for those who live around it, it's horrible. My decision says that at the end-although I know it's cold comfort for nearby residents."

For the public good

Every judge, says Botsford, has a fear of making decisions that lead to adverse consequences. She hasn't been exempt.

In the mid-1990s, she was one of several judges who impounded records related to priests accused of molesting children. The impoundments came to light in a 2002 Boston Globe article reported by the paper's Spotlight Team.

At the time, Botsford says, impounding records wasn't an uncommon practice, as long as attorneys on both sides of a case agreed to it. "If the archdiocese had insisted the records be impounded and the plaintiffs disagreed, I don't think I would have done it," she says now. "But it was a joint motion. The alleged victim didn't want to have this event in the public record."

She adds, "We're all in a different place now, though. The magnitude of the [clergy sexual abuse] issue changed a lot of people's views about impoundment. Today, I wouldn't do it."

Does she dwell on the fact that her decision added to the secrecy that helped obscure the scandal? "I was sorry," she says. "Maybe I should have been a whole lot smarter and more prescient. But I don't go back and relive it."

Botsford says that judges also worry about cases involving dangerous prisoners who, after serving their terms, have a right to be freed. "Sometimes people get released and go out and murder or rape again, and you think, If only I had decided differently," she says. "It's a terrible feeling. But I don't know what you can do to avoid it. You can't always take the safe course."

Her dual sense of what's reasonable and what's right makes Botsford an excellent judge, colleagues say.

"She has always impressed me as being somebody who has an extremely careful, thoughtful approach, while at the same time being very sensitive to the human aspects," says former partner Krokidas. "She brings the profession to a new level."

Krokidas also lauds Botsford's commitment to public service. "She clearly could have been out in the private sector, doing any number of different things," she says. "But, from the beginning, Margot has chosen a life that's going to keep her very much in the center of very important public issues. That's who she is."

Although people may assume judges have a cushy life, Krokidas adds, "being a judge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires many huge sacrifices, the first of which is financial. And I don't think they get a whole lot of support from law clerks or support staff. It's a lonely and very demanding profession. The judges work very, very hard."

Clearly, Botsford has impressed others with her intellectual prowess, diligence, modesty, and devotion to the public good. From her point of view, though, she's just trying to do the best job she can. And-even after sixteen years-her eyes brighten when she talks about being a judge.

"It's different all the time, and intellectually challenging," she says. "My colleagues are quite terrific. I love the court staff."

Her final ruling? "I couldn't," she says, "imagine a better job."

Karen Feldscher is a senior writer.