Mike sits down with sitting Oregon Supreme Court Justice Bronson James — public defender and private practice lawyer turned Circuit Court, Court of Appeals, and now the state’s highest bench — for a rare, wide-ranging conversation with a sitting Justice. They start with comic-book tattoos and an actual ongoing Oregon Supreme Court Dungeons & Dragons campaign, then dig into the real stuff: what privacy even means in a world of data brokers and license plate readers, why Oregon’s 1859 constitution offers stronger protections than the federal floor, the “laboratories of democracy” under strain from federal preemption, and the perfect questions to ask judicial candidates this fall in your backyard gatherings. They close on judicial courage, Brown v. Board, and what it actually looks like when a judge is doing the job to improve the lives of the people they serve.
Topics Covered
Comic-book tattoos and an actual ongoing Oregon Supreme Court Dungeons & Dragons campaign
His path to the bench: Reed College, the dot-com boom, PhD guilt, and why he ended up in law school “not for any particular reason”
What surprised him at each level of the job — trial court, Court of Appeals, and now the Supreme Court
A plain-language tour of Oregon’s court system for non-lawyers
What privacy actually means today, and why the law struggles to keep pace with technology
Oregon’s constitution vs. the federal constitution — how Article I, Section 9 differs from the Fourth Amendment, and Hans Linde’s legacy building Oregon’s independent constitutional tradition
Contested judicial elections in Multnomah County this November, and the real mechanics of how judicial campaigns work
The information gap between lawyers (who can read a judicial candidate’s philosophy easily) and voters (who mostly can’t)
Why “just calling balls and strikes” is a myth, and what actually reveals a judge’s character
Judicial courage, Brown v. Board of Education, and MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
Closing advice: why headlines rarely tell the full story, and how listeners can become better-informed voters on judicial races
About Our Guest
Justice Bronson James sits on the Oregon Supreme Court, appointed by Governor Kate Brown in 2022 and elected to the seat in his own right in 2024. He previously served on the Multnomah County Circuit Court and the Oregon Court of Appeals, and worked as a public defender and in private practice before that. He teaches Oregon constitutional law at Lewis & Clark Law School.
