About Bob Young

Justice Robert P. Young, Jr., grew up in Detroit and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Justice Young has been a member of the Michigan Supreme Court for 11 years.  Governor John Engler appointed him in 1999; he was elected in 2002 to a term that will expire in December 2010, and he is running for reelection this November. Before joining the Supreme Court, Justice Young served as a judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, to which he was appointed in 1995 and elected in 1996. Prior to that, he had been in private practice for 15 years.

Justice Young is a “judicial conservative,” which means that he believes in the “Rule of Law” rather than the “Rule of Judges.”  As a judicial conservative, he believes that judges should apply the Constitution and laws as written and that judges have no authority to impose their policy preferences on those that the People have written into their Constitution or their elected representatives have enacted into law.  He has written many opinions defending the constitutional rights of Michigan citizens, including Hathcock v Wayne County, which prevented the government from taking private property to give it to another private person.

Justice Young has been an adjunct professor at Wayne State University Law School for a number of years and has been awarded honorary degrees from Michigan State University and Central Michigan University.

Justice Young has been married for 35 years and has two adult sons.