Tell us about yourself: why are you running for the judge’s seat?
Amit Kapoor:
I love my job. I love doing my job. I love showing up.
For me, when people ask me this, I — in a very genuine way — get to say I’m living the American dream. I’m an immigrant, I’m like a person of color, and I was born on the other side of the world, you know, relatively poor, no property, no political connections.
So when I think back, and think about that child, if I were to say, “Hey, you’re gonna be on the other side of the world someday, in the United States of America, you will get to be a judge, and you will get to uphold the rule of law. You’ll get to enact fairness and compassion and help uphold little-d democracy every day.” That’s like out of a storybook, right?
The other thing is, I feel motivated about this job because I get to know one of the most profound American values: that we are a country that wants and invites a diversity of people. We don’t care where you come from. We don’t care what you come with, but you will be given an opportunity to work hard and succeed. And I feel like I have done that.
As far as the sort of technical answer to why I’ve run? Well, this is my job. I love doing this job, so I’d like to keep doing my job.
Katina Saint Marie:
I have been practicing law since 2007 — nearly two decades. So I came to Eugene for the rain, and I stayed here, I think, just because I love it; it’s such a welcoming community.
I raised my family here, and am a triple duck. I started at Lane Community College and got a transfer degree, then a bachelor’s degree at the U of O, majored in English, then a law degree and finally a PhD in English also. I have put my roots in here. I’ve lived in rural Lane County as well as in the Eugene-Springfield area, and I’ve been here since 1990, so practicing law here, I came to the practice kind of organically.
My job from 1998 to 2002 was at a law firm in Springfield. I was supporting an attorney who was practicing family law, and during that time, I also needed to end my first marriage and found myself a litigant in Lane County Circuit Court. I needed to get a restraining order, and I also didn’t know how to afford an attorney. And that was a really scary time. My children were 7 and 1 at the time — I had to do a lot of safety planning and find myself out of a difficult situation.
I was trying to find a lawyer, and I had even reached out to some lawyers and said, “Hey, I’ll be your legal secretary for free if you represent me.” Finally, I did find a lawyer who agreed to represent me on a reduced fee schedule, and so I found myself answering phones in a law firm and talking to people who couldn’t afford the retainer. At the same time all that was going on, I had always wanted a career, that’s all I could say to myself about what I wanted. I didn’t know how to get there. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew that every time the managing partners went into the conference room and closed the door, I wanted to be on that side.
So as I’m telling people, “I’m sorry, we can’t schedule an appointment if you can’t afford the retainer,” and I’m realizing I want to be on the other side of the door, and I’m in court and feeling scared, all of those things sort of coalesced. Plus, I really wanted to major in English literature. I had turned in my transcript to Lane Community College, showing where I was with getting this transfer degree that I had been working on since 1990, and here it is in 2001, and they analyzed my transcript and wrote on there: “No more English classes.”
I thought law school seemed like, in some ways, a path of least resistance. It’s something a person can do with an English degree, and I think I could use it to help people like me. And so finally, I made that deal with myself: OK, fine. You can major in English if you agree to go to law school at the end of that.
That’s what brought me to law school. I wanted to help people who were situated similarly to myself. I hoped to be helping people who were experiencing domestic violence and did not know how to navigate the courts or find a lawyer who could help them. From the beginning of my legal career, my goal was to help people. Over the years, what I was doing, other people started calling service. So that word came into my vocabulary — I want to serve the community. I want to use my skills in a way that will be most beneficial for the people around me.
I found myself volunteering in law school for the Portia Project, which is no longer in existence. It was an organization established to assist incarcerated women. Barbara Aldave was the law professor who started it. I met her when my Women in the Law teacher organized a tour of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, and that’s when I learned what it looked like on the inside of a prison.
News stories always stop when someone is sentenced, and we don’t follow them on that journey. I saw the mental health ward, segregation, people training puppies to become service dogs. I just became aware that there was a need, stepped in, and started helping people with divorce paperwork inside the prison.
Barbara offered me my first job out of law school working for the Portia Project. I also started a master’s in English literature in my second year of law school and switched into the Ph.D. program. So I was GTFing, and that got me healthcare insurance for my kids while I worked for the Portia Project.
Soon after I became a lawyer, the public defenders here in Lane County called me. They needed someone who could go out and meet with their juvenile clients — there were three juvenile dependency lawyers at the public defender’s office — and report back to the lawyers. So I started seeing what the foster care system in Oregon looked like: going into foster homes, homes where children were placed with parents on a safety plan, driving all over Lane County into rural areas and urban areas and seeing how kids were living.
Eventually, Tom Dagan, who worked for the public defenders, sent me over to Mark Friedman, who was opening Access the Law. Mark said he’d give me an office in his building for the Portia Project if I agreed to take cases for Access. So I became a lawyer for Access as well, helping low-income people. As the Portia Project wound down, I found myself full-time at Access and part-time for the public defenders.
In 2013, I opened my own law office, still working on a sliding scale with very low rates. Colleagues were coming to me and saying my rates were too low. But I’m still very careful with people’s money when they trust me with it. My practice changed over time to exclusively family law as a retained attorney.
Then in 2022, one of the judges out at juvenile court asked if I could come to chambers and explained that there were a lot of conflicts among the public defenders and the consortium, and they needed local attorneys to take dependency work on contract with the state. So I became qualified to work in dependency and started taking those cases. Two years ago, I was invited to join the consortium. I’m now doing juvenile dependency work at 0.75 FTE [Full-Time Equivalent] and filling the rest with retained work.
Also in 2023, I started doing extensive training in mediation and alternative dispute resolution programs. I took Bill Eddy’s training on high-conflict work, so I can work with people who are in high conflict but still want to mediate rather than litigate.
Also in 2022, there was a call for people who wanted to serve as a pro tem judge. We now have 17 judges, but for the longest time, we only had 15, and there was a real need for help on the bench. They established a pro tem docket for every Thursday. I applied, was vetted by the local bar and recommended by the presiding judge, then qualified by the Oregon Supreme Court to serve as a pro tem judge. I’ve been doing that since 2023. My first term expired this year, so I reapplied and was reappointed.
We were interested in learning more about your background in trials and litigation leading up to settlements. How long have you been an attorney? What kind of cases have you specialized in?
Kapoor:
Well, I was just at the public defender’s office. There were all criminal cases. So I was in court every day for a variety of different hearings. The work of a public defender is, on the one hand, very satisfying because I didn’t get to pick my clients. I would come to the office, and there were the five files for that day. Open the file. OK, what’s happening in this case?
I have the privilege of working with some of the most vulnerable people in our community at the intersection of mental health, addiction and being unhoused. And that was incredibly satisfying.
There’s this very real sense of wanting to support these people’s basic needs. And unfortunately, a lot of public defense systems are not set up to provide those wraparound services. They certainly weren’t set up then, but we are shifting towards that, right? When you think of the criminal justice system, especially, these are people in need. And I had the privilege to work with them. On the bench, I have covered nearly every area of the law that regularly appears in court.
Jury trials, both criminal and civil, family court matters, treatment court matters, tendency matters, restraining orders, stalking orders, elder abuse orders, name changes, traffic tickets, major felonies, have been assigned. Major cases get pre-assigned; I’ve had murder cases assigned, helping guide attorneys through that. Settlement conferences.
There are very few things that happen in court that I haven’t had some exposure to. Lane County is a high-volume jurisdiction. I’ve certainly had thousands of hearings. The total number of cases or matters I’ve touched in one or another judicial capacity is probably something like 12,000.
A follow-up to that: Have you ever had cases that have been appealed, overturned or overruled?
My personal view is that an appeal is not a personal front. Part of that is I had the immense good fortune of getting a really decent graduate education. I was in a top-rated program where the emphasis was, you receive data, you learn from data, right?
My areas of expertise are political sociology and social psychology with an emphasis on social movements. I was trained as a structural sociologist to look at what’s happening in society, how it’s happening, and I’ve been teaching that since 1999. So issues with race and gender, stratification, social problems, those things and intraweave these ideas of what does justice mean? With regards to the question that you posed, the collective mechanism is there to make sure that the collective interpretation of law is being rendered. That’s what the appellate process is. I sleep very comfortably knowing that if I got it wrong on behalf of this person, I love the idea that we sustain faith in our community by saying, I’m not above the law. Someone will check my work, and if I got it wrong, they will let me know what to do, and then we will fix that problem.
Trial judges are appealed because that’s just a part of the process. My personal stats show that I have not been frequently appealed, and the overwhelming majority of appeals filed have been affirmed. So my judicial reasoning is well intact. And part of that is taking the time to listen. I give parties the time they need to present their case. I engage, and I try to deliberate thoughtfully. When it comes to justice, getting it right matters, whether that is a relatively simple case or a more complicated case. That is the duty that is owed to each person who comes to the courthouse.
Saint Marie:
Starting with the Portia Project, I began as an advocate for people coming to the adversarial process without much of a voice — incarcerated women. One of the things we found was that courts often didn’t understand that a woman could be in prison and be a mother and also be accountable for the crime she had committed. I picked up where clients were at that moment. They were people trying to reach out to their families, trying to maintain their relationship with their kids.
My cases were all over Oregon because there’s only one women’s prison in Oregon, and the women come from every county. I was going to court after court, where nobody knew who I was. I had to be brave, and I learned so much through that work.
I even got to do an appeal. It was a case out of Washington County where the judge denied my client’s request to have time with her kids, who lived very close to the prison. That judge had used the state forms and crossed out the required finding — a judge is required, if ordering no parenting time, to make the finding that parenting time would endanger the health or safety of a child. The judge crossed it out and wrote in his own reason instead: “Mother was convicted of a Measure 11 offense.” I got the judgment back, saw the required finding wasn’t there, and appealed. It was a very easy appeal. But it gave us firm case law that says prison alone isn’t enough — a person’s crime isn’t enough to say they don’t get time with their kids.
That case law mattered later. I represented a father serving a term in prison whose 2-year-old boy wanted to see him. The mom had even testified that every time the boy saw a black truck, he wondered if it was his dad. He had a little photo album his counselor had helped him make, and he slept with it under his pillow. I was able to use that appellate case and argue that the reasons the mom was giving were not enough.
Over the course of my career I’ve carried a high volume of cases because I charged very little. There have been periods where I had a full trial every week for two months straight. Not contested hearings — full trials where I’m subpoenaing witnesses, calling them to the stand, putting on exhibits. Going back just to 2014, there are roughly 1,300 clients. That doesn’t go all the way back to 2007. Sometimes I’ll have a big firm on the other side — eight opposing counsel plus an associate plus staff — and it’s just me.
All of that is what’s brought me to where I am now. I have spoken to so many clients, negotiated, gone to trial, and what I’ve emerged wanting to be is a neutral. I see that I can do the work because I’ve been doing the first-chair work. That’s where I want to serve.
What do you see as the essential skills a judge should have?
Kapoor:
I don’t think there is necessarily just one thing. The community benefits from a diversity of skills, and you want a bench with a deep, diverse background so that judges collectively bring that to the service of the community.
Taking the time to listen is an essential quality of a judge. Listening actively and engaging — you want people to feel heard. On the bench, you have to do that differently than you do as an attorney. As a public defender, there were moments for soft skills: reaching over, putting a hand on a client’s back, reminding them, “We talked about this, it’s OK.” On the bench, you have to hold that line differently. I’ve had people having a very tough time in court, and I’ll pause and say, “This is obviously difficult. I’m happy to take a break. But I want you to understand — it’s not that I don’t care about your emotions. I can’t emote with you, because that would be taking a side.”
I was over at juvenile court for several years before coming back downtown. In that context, the state apparatus is being asked to interfere in one of the most profound and intimate relationships — parent and child. Who is being asked to remove these children?
I would not only read the report, but I would print it out. I would take it to the bench. I’d hold it up and say, “So-and-so, you see this smiley face? Good job, you’re already doing a good job on that. But you’ve got to focus on that. I want you to understand — I read this report.” The reason I did that was that I wanted parents to have trust in the system. They don’t want their babies taken. We are paying attention. Sometimes it’s like 30 minutes, but we take our time reading through. I do not feel any shame in that because I’m being asked to do something profound. I need that parent to know that I’m not just rubber-stamping something. I am required to follow the law, and the way that I do that is I engage with what’s being presented.
I think doing things to foster and build public trust in the court system overall is one of the most essential qualities a judge can have. And learning from each other. It’s a very difficult job — there’s a lot of secondary trauma. Nobody’s perfect.
Saint Marie:
Patience, integrity, compassion, diligence, timeliness, fairness, good judgment, equanimity, joy — and stick-to-itiveness.
I think those values show up in the work. I had a case as a pro tem where the mother was unrepresented and the father had a lawyer. You can’t go and sit with the unrepresented person and be their lawyer. You have to be fair. But in order to have an equitable courtroom, the person without a lawyer has to have a little bit of a boost to be able to put on her case.
That took a lot of patience. What was reported as a one-day trial went two full days, and then a partial day, and then there was a problem with the judgment and we were back. Every time she had a document she wanted the court to see, I would say: “What’s the name of the document? Have you shown it to this lawyer? Let’s mark that as respondent’s exhibit.” We went through the whole thing step by step.
It’s tempting to shortcut that. But I have been with the client who felt silenced, who came to me after and said, “I wasn’t able to give my evidence, I wasn’t able to bring my witnesses, and the judge made a decision without knowing these things.” I know what it sounds like when someone feels like they didn’t have their day in court.
Even though you can’t open it up and let in things that aren’t admissible, you can still be very careful — let the person know exactly why you’re making the ruling you’re making, and let them know you are there patiently for every single thing they want to bring to the court’s attention. Part of the work is to get it right in every case. But in doing so, it’s also letting everyone know they’ve been heard and treated fairly, so they are not walking away saying, “I didn’t get any justice today.”
Why are judges elected to their position, and should they be?
Kapoor:
I think our court system — despite the many things we can still improve, the works in progress — is one of the best-functioning examples of something that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Every day, people with burdensome pain and problems come into court and are asked to trust a stranger — the judge — or a group of strangers — the jury. And whether they’re happy with the result or not, they largely walk away and accept it.
At the same time, we ask jurors, strangers, to give up their workday, sit in an uncomfortable environment, pay close attention all day, not make up their minds and not talk to anyone about it. And thousands of people do this every year. That works because we, as a society, have decided we are invested in making democracy work. Part of democracy is elections.
I’ll also say that I think Oregon’s judicial application process is a wonderful hybrid model. It functions like a Venn diagram for how democracy can work — the governor gets to select, but drawing on bottom-up information from people who know the candidate and have seen their work over the years. I have nothing bad to say about the fact that we have a democratic process.
Saint Marie:
The Oregon Constitution says that judges are elected. There’s a statute based on the Oregon constitution that says a circuit court judge serves a term of six years, and before that term expires, there shall be an election, and the next judge shall be elected. That’s what the statute says. As a judicial candidate, it’s not my position to challenge that or hypothesize about what a better system might be. That’s the law.
I am also there to follow the law. I’m not there to use policy decisions to move the law in any particular direction. Because the Oregon constitution and our statutes say that judges are elected, that’s how it is, and I am participating in a democracy.
There was an article in the Oregon State Bar journal in 2012 — when there was an open seat on the Oregon Court of Appeals and three candidates ran — written by the person who came in third. He talked about voter perception, about how money can corrupt the process, about how hard it is to get your message out. I understand that point of view. But that article came out in 2012 and nothing has been done. If there is a better way, that’s a conversation for another day. And it’s not a reason to not bring an election.
I think the other thing that voters might not know is that there are 17 judges — 16 of them were originally placed on the bench by a governor. Only one judge serving right now was placed there by the voters. I have talked to people who just feel a little bit apathetic about it, and I’m asking voters not to be apathetic. I’m asking voters to look at my record, compare it with others’ and decide which person would be better suited to serve them, their families and their neighbors.