Lawyers Leading North Carolina: A Personal, Historical Perspective

It has been a long time since the late Barbara McComas exposed me to North Carolina history in the seventh grade at Wells School. A long, long time!

Coming on the heels of sixth-grade world history, it was refreshing to study people and places closer to home. Reciting the names of all 100 counties and county seats was a challenge, but it paled in comparison to trying to remember the names of our governors.

And there weren’t as many of them to remember in the spring of 1969.

The seal of the officer of the governor is a blue circle with yellow font. In the middle is the seal of the state of North Carolina, in which one woman stands holding the constitution, and another woman sits.

Fast forward more than 50 years – keyword fast – and the history of our state remains a favorite subject. This is especially true with the governor’s office, from a purely nonpartisan perspective, as it relates to the legal profession in general and the North Carolina Bar Association in particular.

With last year’s election and this year’s installation of Joshua Harold (Josh) Stein as North Carolina’s 76th governor, the state’s highest office has been held by 44 lawyers. This figure includes four terms spanning 16 years served by attorney James Baxter Hunt Jr. (1977-85 and 1993-2001) and two terms served by lawyers Richard Caswell (1776-80 and 1784-87) and Zebulon Baird Vance (1862-65 and 1877-79).

The frequency with which the office has been held by lawyers since the establishment of the North Carolina Bar Association in 1899 is even more impressive. Over this period of more than 125 years, only seven non-lawyers have served as governor, which means 21 lawyers have held the office.

And most of these lawyer-governors (access complete historical listing) have been current or former members of the NCBA!

Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.