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May 23, 2003/Iyar 21 5763, Vol. 55, No. 39
Religious teachings inspire retired judge
BARRY COHEN
Editor
A recently retired Arizona Superior Court Judge learned from an early age the Jewish value of improving the world, a teaching he says placed him on a legal career path leading from private practice to the attorney general's office to tenure as a judge and now back to private practice.
"There were always discussions in our house centered around Israel and politics and taxes and poor people and how we need to make the world a better place," says Alan Kamin.
Kamin joined Brown & Bain after ending his 20-year tenure Jan. 31 as Superior Court judge of Arizona, Maricopa County.
While he says he cannot point to a specific anecdote or incident of how Judaism directed his professional career, Kamin claims the Jewish teachings he learned created a unique home environment.
The conversations "in my house were very much - at least indirectly - the result of being Jews and growing up in Jewish culture, with a heavy influence by mitzvot and what it means to be a good person," he explains.
Kamin was born in Miami, Fla., but the family moved to Tucson when he was 9 because of his asthma.
While he does not describe his home as religious, "we'd have Friday night dinners always together ... and there was lots of conversation, and for the adults, a fair amount of wine drinking."
Kamin says his parents, Zahava and Sol Kamin, were active in the Tucson Jewish community, particularly in the then-UJA annual campaign. Zahava, born in prestate Palestine, was also active in Pioneer Women, a Labor Zionist group, he adds.
After high school, Kamin decided to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he majored in economics and minored in biology. Though he initially had planned to go to medical school, "after my junior year, I decided, you know what? I don't like looking through microscopes."
Of note is that he only chose law school "as a default."
"It's not like I said to myself, 'I want to be an outstanding trial lawyer.' "
What he could do with a law degree was complementary with the public policy issues discussed at the dinner table about improving society, he says.
Kamin graduated from MIT in 1963 and earned a law degree from Stanford Law School in 1966.
After eight years of private practice in San Francisco, he then became the assistant attorney general in the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
By 1982, he had planned to move back to Tucson from Phoenix because his wife, Carol, received a job at Tucson's Jewish Family and Children's Service.
But then he was offered the chance to be a Superior Court Judge, a position he accepted and held for more than 20 years.
"I wanted to make sure things are decided properly," he says, on why he wanted to become a judge. "It was important to ensure fair hearings and fair results."
"The thing I enjoyed the most were the oral arguments," he says. "I enjoyed having a courtroom full of attorneys and getting into a good argument with them."
He also liked the process of impaneling juries.
"I liked kibitzing with the jurors, because once the trial starts, you don't do that," he explains.
When Kamin retired from the judgeship, he could have left legal practice behind, but he was not ready for full retirement.
"After 20 years, I felt that I needed a change," he says, "but I thought that if I didn't (return to private practice), I would always be unhappy."
Kamin says the change is not that drastic because he is still focusing on "mediation and arbitration," similar to his judicial role.
Whether he will ever officially retire from the law is an open question, he notes. The possibility of formally studying Jewish law is still a possibility.
"If the day comes that I do retire, (studying Talmud) would be something that I probably very much would enjoy doing," he says.
Kamin notes that he is drawn to the fact that Talmudic rabbis, like contemporary lawyers, struggled with making the best legal decision.
The law is "oftentimes not black and white. There's something to be said on each side of the question."
Kamin and his wife Carol, executive director of Children's Action Alliance in Phoenix, have two sons, Daniel, 30, and David, 22.
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