RALEIGH — Chief Justice Paul Newby and his wife, Macon, completed an historic 100-county courthouse tour last week with two stops in eastern North Carolina. Newby visited the Chowan and Dare county courthouses last week with Dare being No. 100.
In announcing the tour in May 2021, Newby said his goal was to visit every courthouse — something, he said at the time had never been done by a sitting chief justice.
“I embarked on this tour to express thanks to local judges, clerks, and courthouse personnel and to gain a better understanding of the unique challenges faced by each courthouse,” Newby said in a statement. “This tour has been instrumental in learning how we can best support local judicial leadership to further our mission and to meet our Constitutional mandate to deliver justice without favor, denial, or delay, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Newby was adamant about talking to judges and staff at each of the courthouses to thank them for their hard work in fulfilling the Judicial Branch’s constitutional “open courts” mandate to provide equal justice to all in a timely manner.
The tour kicked off in true “Murphy to Manteo” fashion — beginning at the Cherokee County courthouse and ending in Dare County.
The final visits culminated a busy stretch for the state’s Supreme Court.
Earlier in October, the Supreme Court held two days of arguments in Edenton at the historic 1767 Chowan County courthouse.
