Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson makes stop in Albany

ALBANY – Getting out of Atlanta for the day, Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson made a trip to a part of the state with which he is not familiar this week, meeting local officials and attorneys in Albany.

The justice, who was appointed to his current position by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022, said he has passed through southwest Georgia on his way to Florida over the years but has not spent extensive time in the area.

On Wednesday he visited with judges and lawyers during a luncheon with the Dougherty Circuit Bar Association. During the luncheon, he spoke on the role of courts in the state.

“It’s really important for us as justices to get out across the state and build relationships with the bench and bar,” Pinson said during a conversation with an Albany Herald reporter. “That’s frankly one of the parts of the job I enjoy the most. Getting to southwest Georgia was definitely a big part of that. (It’s) really an important part of the job. Working together with counsel is the only way our system works.”

As one of the state’s nine Supreme Court justices, Pinson said the court is responsible for writing several hundred legal opinions each year. One reason is that in Georgia all cases for appeals in cases involving a murder conviction or a constitutional question automatically are steered to the Supreme Court.

In contrast, he said, the U.S. Supreme Court may write a few dozen opinions in a year’s time.

“We’re one of the busiest state Supreme Courts in the nation if we’re not the busiest,” he said.

A graduate of the University of Georgia’s Lumpkin School of Law, Pinson served as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, and then at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas. He later practiced with the Jones Day firm in D.C.

Prior to his selection for the Supreme Court, Pinson was appointed by Kemp in 2021 to the Georgia Court of Appeals, after he worked for five years in the attorney general’s office, four of those as the solicitor general.

Several solicitors general were involved over the years in the Georgia-Florida “water wars,” and Pinson was part of that process.

“It was during my time there we ultimately won the case against Florida,” he said. “I’m sort of proud of that work.”

Having worked in a wide range of legal cases and in various capacities, the justice described himself as “more of a generalist,” having no particular type of case that he favors over another.

“I like the difficult cases that require a lot of research and digging, where you spend a lot of time wrestling with it,” Pinson said. “It’s the difficult questions that I really enjoy.”

As a member of the state’s court of last appeal, the Supreme Court’s role is not to decide facts but to determine whether litigants got a fair trial in a lower court, he said.

“We decide whether there’s a legal error that requires sending it back to the trial courts,” he said.

The role of the court is not to weigh in on hot button issues, the justice said.

“If you’re looking to change the law, you have to look to the legislature,” he said. “We just help people settle their disputes.”

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