Former Justice Louis Scolnik was honored this week by the Maine Civil Liberties Union.
LEWISTON – Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Scolnik has received a special award by the group he helped create: the Maine Civil Liberties Union.
On Thursday, the retired lawyer, judge and justice was presented a plaque by the organization honoring his 80th birthday.
The Lewiston native watched another prominent lawyer win an award in his name. Maine Attorney General Steve Rowe became the 15th recipient of the Justice Louis Scolnik Award.
The organization cited Rowe’s work defending the state’s Muslim immigrants.
It’s an award meant to compliment someone for work as a preserver of civil liberties.
“I recalled that day, not too many weeks back, when I saw (Rowe) in the march that began at a church in Lewiston to demonstrate solidarity with the Somali immigrants,” Scolnik told attendees at the ceremony. “I feel honored, as I do every year, by the type of person the Award Committee selects.”
Much of Scolnik’s life has been spent fighting for people’s rights.
He grew up in Lewiston, attending Bates College until World War II interrupted his studies. In 1943, the U.S. Navy made him an officer and sent him to the Pacific. He commanded landing craft used to invade Japanese-held islands.
When the war ended, he returned to Bates College. He attended law school at Georgetown University and came back to Maine, passing the bar here in 1952. He’s been here ever since.
Within a few years, he became the American Civil Liberties Union’s sole lawyer in Maine. People who worried that their rights were being denied would call the national office. The Maine ones went to Scolnik. Often, he was paid nothing for the work.
“You have to exercise eternal vigilance in defending the Bill of Rights,” the former lawyer said. “If you let things go by default, then those things are going to be lost.”
By the late 1960s, more people had become aware of the national group and its mission. Demand for civil rights lawyers here in Maine grew.
In 1968, Scolnik and a few other lawyers and professors created the Maine Civil Liberties Union. That first year, its entire budget was $268. It wasn’t enough money to support a single case. There are now more than 1,900 members and a full-time staff based in Portland.
Scolnik went on to become a Superior Court judge. And in 1983, he was appointed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court by Gov. Joseph Brennan.
He retired in 1988.
Scolnik still lives in Lewiston, where he stays busy on a personal computer. He is writing down his memories of World War II.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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