Morehouse College has chosen its fifth Phipps Fellow, Torryn Carter, who will intern this summer with Senior Judge Herbert E. Phipps and work with other members of the Court of Appeals of Georgia. “I am honored to have the opportunity to work with Mr. Carter this summer, along with Judge Phipps, and to continue this court’s tradition of reaching out to students with an interest in the law,” said Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard.
Every summer Morehouse College selects a pre-law student to serve as an intern at the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals and Morehouse College created the Judge Herbert E. Phipps Fellowship in 2017 to create a living legacy to one of Georgia’s greatest jurists.
Judge Phipps became interested in the law when he met C.B. King – who at the time was the only African-American lawyer south of Atlanta – when King spoke at Judge Phipps’ high school career day. As a teen, Judge Phipps began to watch King try cases at the Dougherty County Courthouse. While in college, Judge Phipps was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the civil rights movement. After college, he worked and traveled before going on to law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
C.B. King had attended Case Western as well, as no Georgia law schools admitted African Americans then. Armed with a law degree, Phipps went back home and became the second African American lawyer in Albany. He practiced with C.B. King, and later, as a solo practitioner, working on civil rights cases that covered school desegregation, voting rights, jury discrimination, student rights, police brutality and unfair employment practices.
In 1980 Judge Phipps was appointed as a part-time magistrate and Associate State Court Judge of Dougherty County. Eight years later, he was appointed to serve as the county’s only Juvenile Court Judge. Seven years after that, in 1995, Governor Zell Miller appointed Phipps to the Dougherty County Superior Court.1
In July of 1999, Governor Roy Barnes appointed Judge Phipps to the Court of Appeals, where he served until his retirement in 2016. Since retiring, Judge Phipps has stepped forward to fill a temporary vacancy at the Court of Appeals of Georgia three times. Judge Phipps received the Randolph Thrower Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the State Bar of Georgia’s Committee to Promote Inclusion in the Profession; the Tradition of Excellence Award by the General Trial Practice & Trial Section of the State Bar; and the Chief Justice Thomas O. Marshall Professionalism Award by the State Bar Bench and Bar Committee. Judge Phipps was honored as a Legal Legend by the Georgia Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society. In March 2014, Judge Phipps received The Nestor Award from the Georgia Legal History Foundation “for a lifetime of distinguished service as a wise and honest Counselor and Mentor to the Bench and Bar.”2