WHEN FAITH IN the judicial system frays, it can unwind from both ends.  

People who encounter the system through its lower rungs – like district courts or one of the state’s many specialty courts that deal with substance use disorders, mental health issues, and veterans’ issues – may lose trust in justice forever if they or loved ones face a frustrating or disrespectful experience in their lowest moments. Meanwhile, the nation’s high court has increasingly become viewed as an extension of partisan political ideology rather than a more neutral interpreter of the Constitution. 

In the middle of these very local and very distant courts sits Kimberly Budd, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  

Before sitting in on a specialty court session in West Roxbury on Tuesday, Budd considered her changing relationship to the SJC and her worries about buy-in to state courts in a wide-ranging interview on The Codcast, six months after the chief justice warned that trust in the court system was fraying. 

“Alexander Hamilton famously called the judiciary the weakest branch of government. We wield no power of our own, but for the power that others give us by respecting our decisions,” Budd said in her December speech. “Unfortunately, today there are serious signs that respect for the courts is declining across the country.” 

Data from the National Center for State Courts – an organization of court leaders and professionals – has found that the share of people who believe that state courts provide equal justice for all “well” or “very well” has declined from 62 percent to 46 percent in the last decade, Budd said in December.  

In its most recent survey, the organization shows that the annual approval numbers are ticking up, with a caveat. Belief that state courts are doing a good or excellent job rose 3 percentage points in 2024, spurred by Republicans and independents reporting 15 points and 8 points more confidence while Democratic feeling that state courts are doing a good or excellent job dropped by 6 percentage points. 

Instilling faith in courts is a complicated nut to crack, noted Budd, who grew up in Peabody as the daughter of former Massachusetts US attorney Wayne Budd. Few people want to come into contact with the judicial system, even for jury duty, and “people may lump all courts together, across the country – state and federal. So it’s not that easy to get the message out that we really are trying to make sure that people get justice.” 

Budd, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the SJC, is a careful speaker – a quality she may lean into even more these days, given her association with no fewer than three institutions that have drawn the ire of President Trump: her alma mater Harvard Law School, the judiciary, and the state of Massachusetts. She didn’t mention the president, or his escalating attacks on judges, when discussing trust in the courts. 

“Here in Massachusetts, it’s business as usual,” she said. “We have a system of checks and balances, which work very well here. I feel like the three branches of government, for the most part, are all rowing in the same direction here in Massachusetts. So I’ve always seen the judiciary being independent, and certainly here in the state, and it will continue to be independent because that’s how our system’s set up.”  

She spoke instead with affection and some nostalgia for her time as a trial judge in the state Superior Courts.  

“You have people coming in with all sorts of issues, likely at the lowest point of their lives and looking for help. So the judges, the clerks, probation officers – they are able to effect real change, really help people,” she said. 

She was in West Roxbury to observe a “Recovery with Justice” session of the mental health courts.  

Only Massachusetts and Connecticut do not allow judges to mandate outpatient mental health care, which is also referred to as referred to as “assisted outpatient treatment” or “involuntary outpatient commitment.”  

Judge Kathleen Coffey, director of specialty courts for the Boston Municipal Court, established the Recovery with Justice court in 2007, where judges can redirect people placed on pre- or post-trial probation toward dedicated mental health clinicians. In the early session on Tuesday, Budd watched as Coffey got updates from some people who were proceeding well through the program and one who had missed therapy sessions and was at risk of being returned to the usual trial process.  

At the SJC, Budd said, “I feel privileged to be there. But the work we do is more policy type work. We’re interpreting statutes, making the common law. It’s a completely different thing that I have come to appreciate the importance of, but it’s a bit removed from day to day.” 

There was a professional tether between former Chief Justice Ralph Gants and Budd from the time of her first judicial post. After Gov. Deval Patrick elevated Gants to an Associate Justice post on the Supreme Judicial Court, he nominated Budd to Gants’s former perch at the state Superior Court 2009.  

When Gants died in 2020, at the age of 65, Budd had sat on the high court alongside him for four years. He was her guide into the SJC, and his legal and personal spirt buoyed the justices even through their disagreements. 

“He really was a very, very, very good chief justice,” Budd said, emotion briefly choking her voice. “Not only was he brilliant, and I always could walk down the hall and ask him any question and we’d work through things, but he just had a great sense of humor. He could laugh at himself. We would laugh in the consultation room. We would joke with each other and sort of tease each other. And he was teased just along right along with everybody else.” 

She’s kept that spirit as chief justice. Even during oral arguments, the SJC justices are focused but often funny, probing weighty questions of law on their finer points, but not shying away when a lawyer’s argument trips the justice’s sense of absurdity. 

Budd also looked to continue and advance Gants’s passion for criminal justice reform, which for her has involved the restorative justice pilot through the courts. It brings together offenders and victims, who, Budd notes, often have a limited voice in court proceedings.  

It ties neatly into Budd’s theory of justice: close to the ground, attentive to voices and experiences that may be getting shut out, trying to repair trust in a system few hope to encounter. Sitting in a circle, with the impacted and the impactors talking frankly about their histories, actions, and the consequences, Budd said, “you see the humanity in each other.” 

During The Codcast, Budd discusses the push for more court funding (9:30), her experience as a trial judge (15:30), and following rulings from the US Supreme Court (22:00).