Yvonne Kauger
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Yvonne Kauger is currently a Justice on the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She was born on August 3, 1937 in Cordell, Oklahoma and grew up in Colony, Oklahoma. She is an adopted member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian tribes of Oklahoma.[1] Her daughter, British solicitor/lawyer, Jonna Dee Kauger Kirschner, practices law in Oklahoma City. Judge Kauger's CPA son-in-law, Bruce Scambler, became a naturalized citizen in May, 1999. Justice Kauger was appointed by Governor George Nigh, a Democrat, on March 11, 1984. She was retained to six year terms in 1988, 1994, 2000[2] and 2006[3]. She served as its Chief Justice from January 1997 to December 1998. She is the only woman to serve as the court’s chief justice and vice chief justice.[4] Her current term ends in 2012.
Professional career
A graduate of Southwestern Oklahoma State University and the Oklahoma City University School of Law, Kauger served as presiding judge for the Court on the Judiciary, and on the Law School and Bench and Bar Committees of the Oklahoma Bar Association. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1984.
Awards and associations
Kauger chairs the Building Committee for the Oklahoma Judicial Center.[5] Kauger has served as Presiding Judge for the Court on the Judiciary, and on the Law School and Bench and Bar Committees of the Oklahoma Bar Association. She founded the Gallery of the Plains Indian in Colony and co-founded Red Earth. She has acted as Symposium Co-ordinator for The Sovereignty Symposium, a seminar on Indian law sponsored by the Oklahoma Supreme Court since its inception in 1987. Kauger has received many awards including Valedictorian of her high school class in Colony, and first in her class at OCU School of Law, National Delta Zeta of the year for 1988, and Oklahoma City Pioneer Award for 1989. She was the featured speaker at the Twentieth William O. Douglas Lecture Series at Gonzaga University in November 1990. She received an honorary doctorate from OCU in 1991. She has been named a distinguished alumnus by OCU and by Southwestern Oklahoma State University. On June 7, 1999, she was awarded the Herbert Harley Award by the American Judicature Society in recognition of her outstanding efforts to improve the administration of justice. She is one of only four Oklahomans to have ever received the award and it has been twenty years since an Oklahoman last received the award. In November of 1999, she was honored by the Oklahoma Bar Association with the Judicial Excellence Award. In March, 2001, Justice Kauger was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame. She is a member of the District State-Federal Judicial Council and of the Washita County Hall of Fame. She was adopted by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma in 1984.
In 2004 she was named one of the ten most notable women in Oklahoma City by the Oklahoma City Orchestra League.[6] In July 2004 she donated Main Street in Colony, which her great grandfather built, to Southwestern Oklahoma State University to be used to promote the arts in western Oklahoma. In 2005 Kauger received the Governor’s Art Award. In addition, she is a member of the District State-Federal Judicial Council and the Washita County Hall of Fame.
Political affiliation
Democrat.[7]
Notable rulings
Online access to court records
The Oklahoma Supreme Court adopted rules cutting off public access to court records now available on the Internet.[8] When the rules go into effect on June 10, online access to court documents in the Supreme Court and district courts would be limited to court dockets only.
"What I disagree with is the instantaneous restriction of public access to current public court documents on line," Justice Yvonne Kauger wrote in a separate opinion. She was joined by Justice James Edmondson. "The court made this decision with input only from the court clerks. Others directly affected by the decision — the bar, the bench, the Legislature, the public — were not consulted," Kauger wrote. She said the court recently increased court costs by $15 to improve computerization of all 77 county clerk dockets. "However, as a result of this order, not only is the court taking a giant, 30-year leap backwards to a time when the personal computer was nonexistent, the public is now paying for access to a system which is made inaccessible by the order," Kauger wrote.
Lawsuit against tribe
A lawsuit against an Oklahoma Indian tribe that claims a woman's injuries were caused when an intoxicated casino patron's vehicle crashed into her vehicle may proceed in state district court, according to a Supreme Court decision filed Tuesday.[9]
The lawsuit stems from an April 2004 car accident along State Highway 9 in Pottawatomie County in which Little Axe schoolteacher Shatona Bittle was seriously injured. Bittle's attorneys argued the driver who caused the crash, Valentine Bahe, had been drinking at the nearby Thunderbird Casino owned by the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Bahe died in the crash.
The Supreme Court decision overturned previous decision by a Pottawatomie County district judge and the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals that dismissed the case based on tribal sovereign immunity. Justices Yvonne Kauger and James Edmondson dissented. In the dissenting opinion, Kauger wrote that determining whether sovereign immunity applies in this case is premature. "Answering the question at this stage in the litigation appears premature because the only evidence in the record is that the driver of the automobile which struck the plaintiff was not at the casino prior to the accident," Kauger wrote.
Contract enforcement
Justice Kauger concurred in the majority opinion concluding that the state's newly enacted prohibition on cock-fighting did not, amongst other things, constitute a regulatory taking of private property without compensation, or an unlawful interference with the contractual rights of those involved in cockfighting.
Education
Justice Kauger concurred in the majority opinion of Justice Rudolph Hargrave. That opinion affirmed the trial judge's finding that the school district did not adequately demonstrate that a teacher deserved to have his employment terminated for instructional ineffectiveness and unsatisfactory teaching.
Election law
Justice Kauger concurred in Justice the opinion of Justice Joseph M. Watt invalidating citizens' efforts to place a Tax Payer Bill of Rights(TABOR) on the Oklahoma ballot due to the use of out-of-state petition circulators by the initiative's supporters.
Justice Kauger wrote the majority opinion, which invalidated a property-rights based voter initiative that would have protected private property from economic-development and regulatory takings.
Justice Kauger concurred in the majority opinion upholding the legal and numerical sufficiency of an initiative petition that sought to ban cock-fighting in the state of Oklahoma.
Employment issues
Justice Kauger concurred in the result, but not in the opinion of Justice Robert E. Lavender, which found that an employer had the right to terminate the employment of an employee who insisted on pursuing a claim against a third party under Oklahoma's Open Records Act, as there was no "public policy exception" to such a firing.
Property rights
Justice Kauger wrote the majority opinion, which invalidated a property-rights based voter initiative that would have protected private property from economic-development and regulatory takings.
Justice Kauger concurred in the majority opinion concluding that the state's newly enacted prohibition on cock-fighting did not, amongst other things, constitute a regulatory taking of private property without compensation, or an unlawful interference with the contractual rights of those involved in cockfighting.
External links
- Kauger Bio from Oklahoma Courts
- Kauger's Hefty Resume
- Kauger plays major role in Sovereignty Symposium
References
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Portions of this biography were taken from Wikipedia on December 12, 2007.
