Supreme Court of Ohio Justice Eve Stratton is many things: a lauded jurist, an accomplished attorney, a tireless advocate for Ohioans suffering from mental health issues, a supporter of Ohio’s veterans, and perhaps most crucially, a connector of people. Since stepping down from the Ohio Supreme Court in 2012, Justice Stratton’s ability to unite disparate groups has been the linchpin in her extraordinary success.
“I pretty much describe my job as connecting people,” she said. “They do the heavy lifting; they do the hard work. I’m a connector.”
Justice Stratton’s ability to bring people together has been a throughline in her impressive career. The first woman to be elected judge of the Franklin County Common Pleas Court in 1989, she touted and pushed for mental health courts and crisis intervention teams throughout her time as a trial judge. Appointed to the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1996, the chance to do more arose when several of Justice Stratton’s other projects ended.
“A whole bunch of things sort of fell in place,” she said. “I had one of those eureka moments where I said, this is why God wants me to be a justice. From that point on, [mental health] became the focus of my mission.”
She was so drawn to the work that she stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2012, despite having the ability to serve 12 more years. She joined the Columbus office of Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease LLP, where she is of counsel. On the mental health front, Justice Stratton became a self-taught expert and a convener of advocates in Ohio and nationally. With Justice Stratton at the helm, change happened.
“When I started, there were nine drug courts in Ohio, and there were two mental health courts that judges had started on their own. There were 100 officers trained as crisis intervention team (CIT) specialists to understand how to respond to a call from somebody with mental health issues. We now have over 8,000 CIT officers trained. We have 258 specialized dockets. We lead the country in both.”
Justice Stratton’s work with veterans intersects with her mental health work, as justice-involved veterans often have post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues. When she realized the mental health court model could easily apply to a specialized docket for veterans, she helped establish veterans courts in Ohio and nationally. Next, the Department of Veterans Affairs appointed her to a committee that worked on the Veterans Justice Outreach Program, which connects veterans in the criminal justice system with mental health and other services.
There’s also the Stepping Up Initiative, a national program targeted at reducing the number of people with mental illnesses in jails. Justice Stratton took over as project director of Ohio Stepping Up, and through her leadership, the number of Ohio counties participating in the program increased from 20 to 62. The Attorney General’s Task Force on Criminal Justice and Mental Illness is her “action arm,” where she sends county-level problems to one of 15 committees that are part of the task force, each working to reduce the number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
On Nov. 21, she’ll join Supreme Court of Ohio Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, a passionate champion for veterans, at the 10th annual Lean Forward Veterans Summit, a convening of partners that Justice Stratton started while still a justice. The event will bring together courts, treatment providers, and other community partners from around the state with the mission to serve those who served.
It’s all in a day’s work for Justice Stratton. Not a day goes by that she isn’t bringing people together, combining her strengths with other partners to coalesce around getting the job done. It is, after all, the best way to accomplish her mission.
“Everything connects,” she said. “All of it connects, intersects, interrelates.”
The Ohio Access to Justice Foundation is the largest funder of civil legal services in Ohio. A gift to the Foundation supports Ohio’s veterans.