Janice Law

While Judge Janice Law was still basking in the glow of being judge-elect in Harris County, Texas, Criminal Court Number 5--two misdemeanor cases charging the male defendants with Homosexual Conduct were assigned to her court. Beginning judges hope for an uneventful grace period while learning the ropes of a new position. The two high-profile sex cases came into her court preceded by weeks of national and international publicity, and a fervent commitment by attorneys of Lambda Legal, a New York-based homosexual rights organization, to take the Houston cases to the U.S. Supreme Court as a challenge to the constitutionality of Texas' 119-year-old law (Texas Penal Code Section 21.06) criminalizing consensual, same -sex sodomy.There is an eight-week lag between the time a judge is elected and the time she actually takes office. Her judicial predecessor tranferred the high-profile case to another court 13 days before Judge Law took the bench on January 1, 1999. The unusual transfer, coupled with persistent rumors that the arrests were staged for the purpose of litigation, stirred her investigative journalist instincts, which she had honed years earlier as a newspaper reporter.Five years later, when she became a visiting judge, and the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled, Judge Law reactivated her journalist persona. She decided to investigate the Lawrence case.Janice Law was born in Flint, Michigan. When Law graduated in 1963 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a BA degree in English and Journalism, she was the second person ever-in all generations on both sides of her family-to receive an undergraduate college degree.For the next 14 years, she worked as a reporter for various newspapers across the United States, while her first husband served as a United States Air Force officer. Some of her journalistic work is included in Professional Newswriting, by Dr. Hiley Ward (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1985); The Mass Media by Dr. William L. Rivers (Harper & Row, 1975); and The Effete Conspiracy and Other Crimes by the Press by Ben H. Bagdikian (Harper & Row, 1972).