BUFFALO, N.Y. — It was a moment that Justice Shirley Troutman will never forget. She sat on the bench and looked into the audience and saw her family, including her mother.
Troutman is the second black female ever and the first woman from Western New York to join the court.
She started the job in February. She is ready for the task of looking at the facts and the constitution.
"Our laws work best when we have diverse views. we should not ever have all the people sitting there with the same perspective. It is when the perspectives are diverse geographically, gender, etc. that we have an open dialogue and I too believe in the end a just result."
Governor Kathy Hochul was proud to be in attendance for the ceremony of her first appointment to the state's highest court.
She lauded her career, calling it "a remarkable career in the Assistant District Attorney's office, Assistant U.S. Attorney's Office, Trial Court Judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice, and elected to the Supreme Court in 2009. And she is steeled in the knowledge of people who've been oppressed, knowing that her own parents had escaped a very segregated south, came up from Georgia, so their own children could have an opportunity for a better education. And truly, because of your accomplishments and what your parents brought to your family. This opportunity to live a very different life in a place like New York. You are now a model," Hochul said.
Hon. Troutman was proud to say she is a graduate of Bennett High School in Buffalo.