Justice Hoens of N.J. Supreme Court Steps Down | State | NewJerseyNewsroom.com -- Your State. Your News.

Helen Hoens, former Associate Justice
Supreme Court of New Jersey

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made his Youtube reputation by telling off people he disagreed with - like teachers who didn't want their pensions cut, or their tenure threatened.  He denounced judges who ruled against him on pensions, schools, and open housing.  But everyone was taken aback when he made a politically convenient deal to dismiss a competent and experienced conservative Supreme Court Justice,  a veteran appellate judge and replace her with an amiable but undistinguished supervising judge from south Jersey.
Justice Helen Hoens - a consistent conservative - delivered emotional closing remarks to colleagues, citing as a driving force in her jurisprudence her experience as the mother of an autistic child.  - GWC
Justice Hoens of N.J. Supreme Court Steps Down | State | NewJerseyNewsroom.com -- Your State. Your News.:

BY TORl NADEL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
It has been two years since the last New Jersey Supreme Court Justice resigned from his or her position and on Tuesday, the New Jersey political system experienced the same situation when Supreme Court Justice Helen Hoens stepped down.
Justice Hoens, who has been on the court since 2006 after being a Superior Court judge for 12 years, gave a farewell speech to her fellow justices as well as her friends and family as she sat at the bench, reported The Asbury Park Press.
In her speech, Hoens credits motherhood with the qualities she has used while sitting on the bench. "Every important thing I ever became, all of the qualities like patience and compassion and strength and courage, all of it was forged on the anvil of autism," Hoen’s said, reported NJ.com, "the truth of it is, I have never left the margins of society. I have never left the people like my son, the people in the shadows, the folks that the important people don’t see or just don’t want to see."
While Hoens was delivering her speech, in which she says she “wasn’t planning on leaving quite so soon," her fellow justices grew visibly emotional, and Justice Jaynee LaVecchia said the court “would suffer from Hoen’s ‘untimely departure," while Justice Barry Albin said, “her absence would be ‘sorely felt’” according to NJ.com.

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