Paige Petersen can’t run.
Not because she’s injured or disabled. She just lacks the ability innate in many humans, Trina Higgins told the crowd Friday at Petersen’s swearing-in at the Utah Supreme Court.
Higgins, an assistant U.S. attorney and Petersen’s friend, said Petersen didn’t let her running mates in on her secret until they made it to the top of the first hill in Ivins’ annual Dirty Hurty Half Marathon.
“This is really great surprising news,” Higgins said. “First of all, because she’s a human being over the age of 5 years old, but also because she had signed up for a 13-mile trail run.”
Eventually, Higgins and friends coached Petersen into a run — although she mostly “put her hands out straight to her side, I assume to balance herself, and then sort of pranced along” — and completed the race. Race records show that she even finished a full 4 seconds before Higgins.
Petersen approaches any challenge, big or small, with the same unbridled enthusiasm and confidence, Higgins said, and they’re what she’ll bring to the Utah Supreme Court — plus years of experience, a brilliant legal mind and compassion for those she serves.
Petersen was sworn in as Utah’s newest Supreme Court justice Friday, filling the position left vacant by Christine Durham, the court’s first female justice. Durham announced her retirement in May 2017, after 35 years on the court.
Gov. Gary Herbert appointed Petersen in October, and the Utah Senate unanimously approved in November.
On Friday night, Petersen said she was still in disbelief about her new position, one she didn’t exactly planned for after a lengthy and varied 18-year law career, including stints as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York, as a prosecutor of war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, as an assistant attorney in the federal attorney’s office in Utah and as a judge in 3rd District Court.
So far, she says, she loves her new job.
“I can tell it’s something I’ll be learning and stretching, trying to do my best,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune after Friday’s swearing-in ceremony. She’ll “never get bored in this job. It’ll really require me to do my absolute best, in a way that I’m going to love.”
The people who spoke Friday — Herbert, 3rd District Judge James Blanche and Chief Justice Matthew Durrant — mentioned’s Petersen’s predecessor and the challenges of succeeding the longtime justice.
It’s something Petersen doesn’t take lightly. Since she learned she’d be taking Durham’s spot on the court, Petersen said she’s been thinking about one word in particular: trailblazer.
Durham opened her own law office in North Carolina when she graduated from Duke and discovered that firms weren’t interested in hiring women. She was the 72nd woman accepted into the Utah State Bar. She later became the state’s first female Supreme Court justice in 1982. Twenty years later, she became the first female chief justice of that same court.
“She made a way forward, not just for herself but for the many women who have followed her, and I am very aware that I have walked upon that path,” Petersen said.
It will be difficult to live up to Durham’s legacy, Durrant said, but if anyone can do it, it’s Petersen.
“Put it this way,” he joked, “I think when Christine left the court, probably our average IQ on the court dropped maybe 20 to 25 points. Now that Paige has joined us, I think we’ve recovered all that ground.”
When Blanche spoke midway through the ceremony, he told Petersen that no one can replace Durham — and no one expects her to.
“You’ll have many, many years to chart your own course in this court,” he said.
Petersen’s father, Michael Petersen, told the audience that she won every state-level spelling bee she participated in until she aged out of the competition.
She graduated from Carbon High School and received an associate degree from the College of Eastern Utah. She went on to graduate from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in political science, and she received her juris doctorate from Yale Law School in 1999.
As Michael Petersen reflected on his daughter’s growth from an inquisitive and caring little girl to a justice on Utah’s highest court, he told the audience that she brings “intelligence, dedication, insight, confidence, experience and compassion to her position.”
“As she’s shown in every stage of her life, she’ll commit capabilities to the benefit of the court and the people of Utah,” he said, adding that he and his family are “proud to share” her with with the state.
Editor’s note • Jennifer Napier-Pearce, the wife of state Supreme Court Justice John Pearce, is the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune.
