Cartwright for Clerk •

Cartwright for Clerk •

  • Admits attorneys to practice law in Massachusetts and removes them if they violate legal and ethical standards of the profession,

  • Serves as the bridge to the Justices of the highest court. While the Justices themselves are not elected, the Clerk is. While you cannot hold the Justices directly accountable, you can hold the Clerk accountable.

  • Organizes appeals to the SJC single justice calendar. This means that any cases that file an emergency petition to the SJC and are to be heard by a single justice (instead of all seven), passes through the SJC Clerk, who both schedules when those cases are to be heard, and coordinates with the justice who will hear the case.

The Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court has three main jobs: 

  • Handled 3,000+ legal cases in her 30+ year career as a public defender, court appointed attorney, and in private practice

  • Appointed to and served on Governor’s Restorative Justice Advisory Committee (RJAC) and the Mayor’s Office of Police Accountability and Transparency’s Internal Affairs Oversight Panel

  • Currently a Managing Director for CPCS (the state’s public defender agency), managing 75 public defenders and staff in Suffolk and Norfolk counties

Allison is running for SJC Clerk to build on her thirty-years of experience in the legal profession, serve her community, and serve our state’s highest court.

  • That our state’s highest court is run effectively and efficiently. Allison has decades of courtroom and case experience. She has seen courts run effectively, and has experienced the delays and stress put on all parties when they fall short.

  • That the SJC is open and accessible. Allison would implement regular meetings of a commission of community members to ensure that I stay aware of ongoing issues with court access at the resident-level. These meetings would be multilingual. Additionally, she would have the court's website translated into multiple languages.

  • She would work to have a more diverse range of voices taken into account in decision making, but also that we see more diversity throughout our court system. She would for more outreach to law schools, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools to create a diverse pipeline for legal professions.

If elected, she would work tirelessly to ensure: