THE GOVERNOR’S COUNCIL paid relatively little attention on Wednesday to Supreme Judicial Court nominee Gabrielle Wolohojian’s past romantic relationship with Gov. Maura Healey, focusing instead on artificial intelligence’s threat to the judiciary and a court case involving a dog named Peppermint.

At the hearing’s outset, Healey appeared and briefly spoke, praising Wolohojian, 63, as someone with the “experience, the qualifications, the judgment and the temperament to fill this role and to excel at it.” As she headed toward the exit, Healey told reporters there were “no ethical issues” with the nomination.

In contrast, at the Governor’s Council hearing for Elizabeth “Bessie” Dewar, the governor’s first SJC nominee, Healey stayed for its entirety, sitting in the audience and occasionally looking up from her phone as councilors questioned Dewar.

Dewar’s nomination cleared the council, which must approve all judicial selections, and Wolohojian’s nomination appears on track to do the same. By the end of her four-hour nomination hearing inside the State House on Wednesday, Wolohojian, who has spent the last 16 years on the state’s Appeals Court, seemed to have garnered enough support from members of the Governor’s Council, an independently elected group that also handles pardons and commutations.

A vote could occur as early as next Wednesday, and several indicated they would be backing her nomination.

Out of the 900 or so decisions she has authored while on the Appeals Court, just two or three have been reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court. “That’s pretty damn good,” said Councilor Chris Iannella, who voted for her Appeals Court nomination and said he’d vote for her again for the state’s highest court.

Marilyn Devaney, a Watertown resident who has served on the council for decades, pointed to a decision Wolohojian wrote in 2014 dealing with a liability for damage caused by dogs. The case involved a German shepherd’s attack on a Bichon Frise named Peppermint, prompting Peppermint’s owner to sue the German shepherd’s owner for the costs of emergency surgery. Wolohojian upheld a district court judge’s awarding of the $8,000 in costs in full.

“As an animal lover, I thought it was great,” Devaney said.

But at least one Governor’s Council member wanted to talk about what she called the “elephant in the room” – the past romantic relationship between Wolohojian and Healey and whether that would lead Wolohojian to recuse herself from cases involving the governor’s office. 

Tara Jacobs, who represents western Massachusetts, spoke warmly of Wolohojian’s resume and experience. “But there’s optics here, and it’s troubled me,” she said, referring to Wolohojian’s past relationship with Healey. 

The optics matter to her, Jacobs added, because trust in the court system is important, and she wondered whether a recusal would lead to an even split on a case before the seven-member Supreme Judicial Court. Jacobs also raised the possibility of “groupthink” among the small group of people, including Healey administration officials, that the governor tasked with choosing her SJC nominees.

Wolohojian said she had gone through the judicial nomination process under Govs. Mitt Romney, Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker, and now Healey, and the steps have remained the same, with applications and interviews by screening committees and in front of top administration officials. Appointed to the Appeals Court in 2008 by Patrick, she acknowledged that she had come close to a SJC nomination under the Baker administration.

“I understand your concern about the optics,” Wolohojian told Jacobs. “But sitting from my chair, I have done everything like every other candidate. I don’t know what else I can do other than do the process that’s been in place really since the Dukakis administration.”

Jacobs had sought to ask Healey about her thought process behind the nomination, but Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who chaired the hearing, shut her down, allowing Healey to make her exit. Driscoll told Jacobs to save the questions for witnesses appearing before the council.

Amy Carnevale, the chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, criticized Healey’s nomination. “Regardless of whether the judge opts to recuse herself from issues involving the governor or the executive branch, the impropriety of this nomination remains unchanged,” she said in a statement after the hearing.

Devaney asked Wolohojian generally about recusals, and the justice said they require a case-by-case analysis.

While on the Appeals Court, Wolohojian recused herself from cases handled by Healey’s division of the attorney general’s office when Healey was an assistant attorney general. After Healey was elected attorney general in 2014, Wolohojian recused herself from all cases handled by the office, according to a court spokesperson. Once the current attorney general, Andrea Campbell, was elected in 2022, the same year Healey became governor, Wolohojian resumed hearing cases handled by the attorney general’s office.

Wolohojian and Healey first met while working together at the law firm Hale & Dorr, which now goes by WilmerHale. They are no longer together, and haven’t been for several years. Healey now lives in Arlington with her current partner, Joanna Lydgate, who worked with Healey in the attorney general’s office.

Other members of the Governor’s Council were focused on discussing artificial intelligence with Wolohojian because she is leading a committee advising the Supreme Judicial Court on the technology. Councilor Eileen Duff asked how it could change the legal system.

Wolohojian called it a “grave concern,” saying the technology has the potential to undermine the system due to its creation of “deep fakes” and citations of non-existent court cases, also known as “hallucinations,” which could end up in legal briefs. “Judges rely on the accuracy of the materials filed to help them decide the case. When there are inaccurate filings, the judge’s ability to do their work is compromised,” Wolohojian said.

Wolohojian was initially hopeful that small firms with large workloads could be helped by generative artificial intelligence, but now she sees it as something that could become an expensive tool only within reach of the largest law firms.

The Governor’s Council also took testimony from others in support of Wolohojian’s nomination. Her current colleague on the Appeals Court, Associate Justice Ariane Vuono, described Wolohojian as a thoughtful and caring judge whose expected departure would be a “huge loss.”

Councilor Terrence Kennedy said Vuono’s comments meant a lot, before adding that he understood she had been approached about applying for the Supreme Judicial Court herself and had turned it down. He asked whether there was something about the post she hadn’t told Wolohojian.

“It’s a very hard job,” Vuono said as the crowd, mostly made up of Wolohojian’s friends and family, laughed.