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The appointment of the 54-year-old Gants is Patrick's second nomination to the SJC and, if confirmed by the Governor’s Council, will fill the post of outgoing justice John Greaney, scheduled to leave the bench Monday.

Gants was appointed to the Superior Court by Gov. William Weld in 1997, when Gants was a partner at Palmer and Dodge. He was confirmed unanimously by the Governor's Council. Gants also served as assistant U.S. attorney from 1983 to 1991, eventually heading the Public Corruption Division.

"I joined the Public Corruption Unit around 1987 and focused then on crimes of bribery and other crimes of dishonesty by public servants and those who seek to corrupt them," he wrote in a 1997 state questionnaire required for judicial applicants.

The nomination of a judge with anti-corruption credentials comes at a time when several prominent elected officials or in state and local government are under ethical or criminal investigation. One of them, former Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, received a $100 donation from Gants in April 1994.

Gants previously served for two years as a special assistant to former FBI Director William Webster.

As a Superior Court judge, Gants ruled on several high profile cases, requiring more scrutiny of a controversial Boston University biolab and, in 2001, and ruling unconstitutional a state government practice of weeding out certain employees with criminal records and disqualifying them from employment.

In 2005, Gants ruled that then-Insurance Commissioner Julianne Bowler had overstepped her authority by creating an Assigned Risk Plan for high-risk drivers.

Earlier this year, Gants rejected an effort by Rep. Carl Sciortino to get his name on the primary election ballot after the Somerville Democrat claimed his nomination signatures were stolen from his State House office.

On his 1997 judicial questionnaire, Gants wrote that he supports incarceration, “where the criminal conduct is severe ... especially if it involves an intent to commit serious physical or emotional injury ... regardless of the criminal history of the defendant or the prospects for rehabilitation.”

He also wrote that the use of mandatory minimum sentences “breeds unfairness” and can result in unnecessarily harsh punishments.

On the questionnaire, he also came out in favor of “routine” cost-of-living increases for judges.

The state's Office of Campaign and Political Finance has no record of Gants making political contributions, unlike many of the governor's previous judicial nominees. On his 1997 judicial questionnaire, Gants reported the $100 donation to Wilkerson. He also contributed $200 to Sen. Ted Kennedy's campaign in 1994, $100 to Sen. George Bachrach’s Congressional campaign in 1996 and several other Democrats, in and outside of Massachusetts.

Bachrach, who attended the press conference, told the News Service that Gants’s clarity in writing would make him an asset to the court.

“The hallmark of Judge Gants’s work is that he believes fundamentally that as important as it is that justice is done, that the public perceives that justice is done,” he said. “He has become one of the very best writers on the court. He believes that it’s very important that the public be able to read court decisions and understand that they’re good decisions and that justice was done.”

Patrick called Gants’s writing “prolific.”

Bachrach said he was a classmate of Gants’s at New York’s Mamaroneck High School, where Gants was the president of the student government – “a leader even then.”

“We’re really good friends – over 30 years,” Bachrach said. “I’ve followed his career every step he’s taken from the federal prosecutor’s office, to Palmer and Dodge, to the Superior Court.”

The Patrick administration announced its press conference at 8:45 this morning, after the Boston Globe reported that Gants would be the governor's choice.

At the press conference, Gants offered few clues into how he would approach his new role, except to say he would draw on the lessons he learned from his long legal career and from his family. His body swayed as he spoke behind a podium, and his wife beamed at his side.

Asked how he would like people to remember him when his tenure on the bench ends, Gants said he would “like for them to think that I respected the role of the Legislature and attempted to serve the purpose of legislation. I would like them to think that I respected the constitution, interpreted it as a living being, not a dead letter. I would like them to think that I never revised the facts to simplify a legal case.”

Patrick praised Greaney, who he said “has served the commonwealth wisely for more than two decades.” He said he had spoken with Gants about his approach to deciding cases, but that they did not discuss specifics.

The governor also expounded on his own philosophy for the judiciary.

“I don’t have a litmus test,” he said. “I’m looking for people who respect the role of the Legislature and the constitution and understand in the case of constitutional issues that that document was not written for just one generation. It was written to be timeless.”

Patrick said understanding those principles requires “in addition to a strength of intellect, an understanding of how the world actually works and the importance of the ability of trial courts and individuals and companies and others to apply those rulings.”

http://www.wickedlocal.com/belmont/news/x776465990/Patrick-taps-Superior-Court-judge-Gants-for-SJC