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1. Randall Theron Bell
Home Address: Business Address:
2421 Owl Circle S. C. Court of Appeals
West Columbia, SC 29169 P. O. Box 11629
Columbia, SC 29211

2. He was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky on January 11, 1945. He is presently 49 years old.

4. He was previously divorced: October 21, 1976; Linda A. Bell (moving party); Family Court of the Ninth Judicial Circuit (Case No. 86-DR-10- 3372); one year's separation. He married Pamela Stratacos on May 17, 1987. He has three children: Esther Hart Bell, age 24; Thomas Neil Eddins (stepson), age 19; and Phillip Mark Eddins (stepson); age 17.

5. Military Service: Captain; U. S. Army Reserve; 1967-1975; SN 05 251 830; Honorable Discharge

6. He attended the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia), 1963-1967, A.B.; Oxford University (Oxford, England), 1967-1969, B.A., M.A., 1973; and Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 1969-1971, J.D.

8. Legal/Judicial education during the past five years:
He has substantially exceeded the requirements for judicial continuing legal education during the past five years. In addition to attending continuing education seminars, he teaches them on a regular basis.

10. Published Books and Articles:
(1) Bell, Randall T., "The Craft of Writing a Brief," South Carolina Lawyer, July/August 1990, at 11.
(2) Bell, Randall T., "The Lawyer as Guardian," Volume XI, Social Responsibility: Business, Journalism, Law, Medicine (1985).
(3) Bell, Randall T., "To Write a Brief . . .," in Appellate Advocacy 109-127 (P. Carre, A. Ntephe & H. Trainor eds., 1981).
(4) Bell, Randall T., "Litigation against South Carolina Law Examiners," 43 The Bar Examiner 23 (1974).

12. Legal experience since graduation from law school:
Sept. 1971 - June 1972 Special Counsel to S. C. Attorney General
June 1972 - Aug. 1973 Assistant S. C. Attorney General
Aug. 1973 - Jan. 1980 Law Professor at USC School of Law; private consulting on trial and appellate litigation
Jan. 1980 - Aug. 1983 McNair Law Firm, head of appellate litigation section
Sept. 1983 - present Judge, South Carolina Court of Appeals

13. Rating in Martindale-Hubbell:N/A

20. Judicial Office:
Judge, South Carolina Court of Appeals. Elected by General Assembly of South Carolina; June 27, 1983; qualified September 1, 1983; serving to present. General appellate jurisdiction with exception of cases exempted by S. C. Code Section 14-8-200(b)(Supp. 1993).
Acting Associate Justice, South Carolina Supreme Court, by appointment of the Chief Justice of that Court.

23. Employment As a Judge Other Than Elected Judicial Office:
Adjunct Professor, 1983-present, University of South Carolina, School of Law, teach part-time, Dean John E. Montgomery

24. Unsuccessful Candidate:
He ran unsuccessfully for the Criminal Court of Appeals in August, 1979.

39. Expenditures Relating to Candidacy:
None. These expenses will be reported to the Chairs of the Senate Ethics Committee and the House of Representatives Ethics Committee in compliance with S. C. Code Ann. Section 8-13-920.

44. Bar Associations and Professional Organizations:
South Carolina Bar; American Law Institute; American Judicature Society; American Society for Legal History; Supreme Court Historical Society; Selden Society; Societe du Jean Bodin; Richland County Bar Association; Phi Alpha Delta

45. Civic, charitable, educational, social and fraternal organizations:
Northside Baptist Church, deacon; South Carolina Wildlife Federation; Riverbanks Zoological Society; Friends of S. C. State Museum; Columbia Museum of Art; South Carolina Historical Society; South Caroliniana Society; Harvard Club of South Carolina; South Carolina Rhodes Scholarship Committee, Chair

2. Positions on the Bench:
South Carolina Court of Appeals; 1983-present; Seat No. 3

10. Extra-Judicial Community Involvement:
He is active in his church. He has not used his judicial office to further this or any other extra-judicial activity.

THE CHAIRMAN: The Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline reports no formal complaints or charges have been filed against you. The Judicial Standards Commission has no record of reprimands. We have checked with the appropriate law enforcement Agencies: Richland County Sheriff's, Columbia City Police SLED and FBI. All are negative. The Judgement Rolls of Richland County are negative. Federal Court records show no judgments or criminal actions against you.

There was one civil rights action brought against you and others and dismissed in 1989. We have no complaints or statements that we've received. No witnesses present to testify against you.

I was pleased to see this article because it had something positive to say about every judge offering for this seat. There was not a negative comment in the whole article about any one of these judges. We're not an unusually photogenic group, but they had a nice picture of each of us. I've heard many legislators talk about, "They printed that picture of me," when they were running an article perhaps criticizing a position you had taken on appeal. And there was not, I think, a bad photograph of any of us. In short, Mr. Chairman, it made us and this screening process look good.

Mr. Chairman, as you well know in the past, the media have not been afraid to publish strong criticism of judges, courts and judicial screening and I'm sure that they will continue to be watchdogs, and they should be, on the judicial system in the future. That this newspaper ran such a positive article should remind us of an obvious fact. Each of the judges here today comes before this committee with something good to offer.

I know each of these judges personally. I see their work day in and day out because their decisions come to the Court of Appeals where I work. I tell you that without exception, Mr. Chairman, I am proud to serve with these judges.

Mr. Chairman, this committee has taken seriously its statutory duty to find qualified judges for the courts of our state. The record of recent years also demonstrates that the committee has carried judicial screening beyond the initial question, who, is qualified, to the ultimate and more important question, who will best strengthen our existing Supreme Court.

It is important to recognize that the Supreme Court is a collegial court. It has five members. It is not like the trial courts that my six colleagues sit on. In the trial court, there is only one judge. We have the strongest and best Supreme Court when its members are well balanced in terms of individual knowledge and experience.

Let me give you an example. If we're filling a seat and the four sitting justices already on the Court, all are former legislators and trial court judges, do we get the strongest and best Supreme Court by choosing a fifth person who is also a former legislator or trial judge when we can elect the person with an equally strong, but different record of experience.

If the sitting justices were all former law school professors, would we get the strongest and best Supreme Court by electing a fifth law professor? If the sitting justices were all former prosecutors, would we get the strongest and best Supreme Court by adding another outstanding prosecutor instead of choosing an outstanding lawyer in a private business practice.

The point is obvious. We are asking the wrong question if we argue over which experience is more valuable. Each has something valuable to offer. The more important question is which of these candidates, all with different backgrounds and experiences in the law, would bring to the Court qualities that are not already there.

Mr. Chairman, a great baseball team does not consist of nine great pitchers or nine great batters or nine great outfielders. A great baseball team consists of nine members, each of whom excels at his position.

Let me close by saying this. I think all of us would agree that as a result of changes in this committee's screening process, there is more public interest in judicial elections than at any time we can remember. This used to be an insider's game. You have changed that. Now, the voters of South Carolina are watching to see whom you will elect.

I am confident you will not disappoint our people. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm ready to answer any questions the committee wishes to ask me.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Judge Bell, and your statement will be incorporated into the record.
JUDGE BELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Elliott.
MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you.

My legal training was first at Oxford University in England. I read law there, which is unusual for Americans who study there. They usually read in Political Science or Literature or something like that, but I did read the law and so I have a law degree from Oxford University.

And then I came back to this country and studied law again at the Harvard Law School and I have a law degree from each of those. I would say that I not only went to those schools, which are very demanding schools -- and let me say that the reason I had that opportunity was because other people helped me get those opportunities and I was determined, because I knew that, to take advantage of them and so I worked hard.

They're very demanding schools, all three of them, and I think the evidence of that is that I graduated not -- I just didn't graduate from those schools. I graduated from every one of them with honors. But that's basically my educational background.

Of course, professionally, I regularly attend CLE's and those kinds of things, but in terms of my academic background, I think that summarizes it.
Q. Thank you. You mentioned earlier about some of your litigation experience and I don't mean to dwell on this, but you also had some experience apparently right out of law school with the Attorney General's Office, and I know that's sort of the ancient past?
A. That's right. I was an Assistant Attorney General under Dan McLeod, one of the finest public servants I've ever known. He taught me a whole lot about what it means to serve the public. And I was there for a little over a two years. I was then sort of recruited away to the law school.

I learned to be a trial lawyer by doing two things up there. One is trying lots of highway condemnation cases. Now, those are not complex or particularly original in terms of the law that's applied, but I tell you, it's a good experience for a guy who went to the law schools I did to have to face a jury in Cherokee County and tell them why the Highway Department shouldn't be punished for taking half of their neighbor's farm. And I think that taught me a lot about the practice of the law.

Another thing that I did, which was sort of the nickel and dime variety, but it taught me to try cases before a jury -- most of you probably don't remember, but we used not to have full time solicitors. Senator Saleeby certainly remembers this. The solicitors by and large were part-time practitioners who also handled General Sessions in their county. And sometimes -- let's say there was a solicitor down in Manning, sometimes there would have been a big wreck out on I-95 and he had that wreck case and there was going to be a civil term of court up in Florence where that wreck was and it was scheduled at the same time he was supposed to hold General Sessions in Clarendon County. The practice in those days was for the solicitor to call General McLeod and say, "I can't handle this term of court. Can you send one of your assistants down to handle the term of court?" And guess who got to do it? It was always us guys at the bottom of the totem pole. And J.C. Coleman or somebody like that wouldn't be called to do that unless it was a big case.

And so we went down there and we got to try all the trash cases that the solicitor didn't want to bother with while he was trying, you know, a case in which maybe he would make a $50,000 verdict and be able to support himself in law practice as a solicitor. And we got to try all of these nickel and dime cases that the Solicitor couldn't plead off and that was a very valuable experience.

Again not because it taught us a lot about the theory of the criminal law or anything. Most of them were pretty open and shut on the law, but it made us stand up, it made us deal with people who sometimes only had a fourth grade education or something like that. We learned how to work with these people as witnesses, as adverse witnesses. I learned an awful lot about South Carolina juries, who were basically in these small counties, just a cross-section of people who live there.

That is a valuable experience for you not only as a human being, but it's an excellent preparation for going in later on and trying the big cases

I taught criminal and civil; I taught procedural and substantive. Bruce Littlejohn always reminded me, I taught a course in Roman Law and he has some things to say about that, but I hope the committee and the General Assembly won't hold that against me.
Q. What is it that you enjoy about appellate work especially from the perspective of the judge?
A. I wouldn't confine it to appellate work, but first is the challenge. It's just plain interesting to me and I don't fault someone -- my wife, for instance, is not a lawyer and she doesn't care about it. She probably has a lot more sense than I do, but I'm made up a certain way and I just like this stuff. I like it because it's a mental challenge. I'm probably a little bit too competitive by nature and I like it because it's a contest. It's a contest. It allows you to measure yourself against someone else. And the contest is always best when you're up against a very good lawyer on the other side, so I enjoy that. That's true of trial work and appellate work.

Now, there is a dimension to appellate work that you don't get in the trial court and that is you really don't dialogue very much with the judge in the courtroom. He usually makes the rulings on important questions of law and so forth in Chambers either before the trial or during trial.

When you go in an appellate court to present an argument, all you do is stand up and, again, you talk with some good solid lawyers who are up there and they're asking you questions. You're on the witness stand in an appellate court. And it's a test of your ability to think quickly on your feet. It draws on the fact that whether you really understand the law on the points you're arguing in this case, that is, what kind of background you have in terms of your education, your experience and so forth. And although it's a very serious business, I think it's fun. I think it's fun. One thing I always liked about Alex Sanders was that he realized that humor of which he has an abundance is just a funny way of thinking about

The General Assembly created a great court when they elected those six judges, a really great court. And we had work to do to establish how that court would operate and so on and so forth. In some cases because the Supreme Court had never answered a question of law that came before us, we got the first shot at answering it. And that required us to be thoughtful and deliberate in what we said because we knew the Supreme Court was going to grade our paper. You know when an important question is involved in a case and it's going to go on to the Supreme Court. Or you know when you have two parties for whom money is no object and they're going to take it on to the Supreme Court. You know those things.

And so that was one task we had to do. That task has been completed. I think one reason Judge Sanders left the court to make another kind of contribution is because he realized that he had made a good contribution to that court and it was really at the point where it was the law of diminishing returns, so that's one thing.

Secondly, I think the change would be good for me personally. All of us are human. We tend to get in a rut and start developing a certain way of looking at things and doing things. And on a collegial court, I think nothing is better for you than to move over to another group of very good judges who do things differently and perhaps look at the law a little bit differently. That stimulates you. That makes you question your assumptions and so forth and we want judges to be doing that.

Let me say as an aside that you gave us two new judges last year. You made excellent choices and I'm not saying anything against the people who weren't elected because they were good candidates, too. But we had never had a circuit judge on our court. We now have two former circuit judges. It makes the point I was making in the opening statement. That has added a dynamic.

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