The Atlanta Lawyer May 2017 | Page 9

The Logan E. Bleckley Distin- guished Service Award is bestowed by the Litigation Section at the an- nual Bench and Bar Reception to recognize and honor one of the judges or justices of the courts in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The award is named after Logan E. Bleckley, Associate Justice from 1875 to 1879 and the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court from 1887 to 1894, and is designed to recognize a judge with years of devoted pub- lic service as a member of the judiciary. This year, the Litigation Sec- tion was hon- ored to present the Logan E. Bleckley award to Georgia Su- preme Court Justice Caro l W. Hunstein. The award is well deserved. sion on Gender Bias in the Judicial System, which issued its report to the Supreme Court in 1991. She was the district director of the Na- tional Association of Women Judges (NAWJ) and chaired the local host committee for the NAWJ 1995 An- nual Conference, which was held in Atlanta. Justice Hunstein has served as the Justice Hunstein is a member of the American Bar Association’s Public Perceptions Committee, the Bleck- ley Inn of Court, and has served as a liaison to the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. She is the recipient of more awards than can be listed, has served the community and the profession in many additional ways, and all while L-R: Atlanta Bar Executive Director Terri Bryant, Atlanta Bar Foundation Member at Large Robert G. Wellon, Atlanta Bar Vice President/President Elect Margaret H. Vath, Atlanta Bar Past President Harold E. Franklin, Jr., Atlanta Bar Past President Wade H. Watson III Justice Hunstein won election to the Superior Court Bench of DeKalb County in 1984. As a superior court judge, she was active at the county, state, and national level including serving as the chair of many com- mittees and task forces. Justice Hunstein was later appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court in No- vember 1992 by then Governor Zell Miller. She was only the second woman to hold a permanent posi- tion on the Georgia Supreme Court. Justice Hunstein was appointed as the Chair of the Georgia Commis- President of the Council of Superior Court Judges, chaired the Georgia Commission on Access and Fair- ness, chaired the 1993, 1998, and 2001 State Commissions on Child Support Guidelines, served on the Advisory Board of the Justice Center of Atlanta and the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Preg- nancy Prevention. She is a former Rosalynn Carter Honorary Fellow in Public Policy at Emory University Institute of Women’s Studies and has served as an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Law. raising a family and otherwise hav- ing interests outside of the legal profession. Needless to say, very deserving indeed. To help us honor her longtime friend, current American Bar As- sociation (the “other” ABA) Presi- dent, Linda Klein, was present and provided the introduction of Justice Hunstein. It was so important to Linda Klein to be with us that eve- ning, and to help celebrate Justice Hunstein, that Linda Klein actually rearranged not only her schedule to be there, but the schedule of a The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association THE ATLANTA LAWYER 9