Bryan Biedschied, the First Judicial District’s newest judge, makes his final comments before making a ruling Thursday. He took a seat on the bench this week. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Bryan Biedschied, the First Judicial District’s newest judge, makes his final comments before making a ruling Thursday. He took a seat on the bench this week. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
When he was studying anthropology at the University of New Mexico, the First Judicial District’s newest judge, Bryan Biedscheid, took advantage of an exchange program to spend a year at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
While there, he made friends with some Australians, and a few years later, as a student at the University of New Mexico Law School, he spent a semester at the University of Tasmania in the Australian island state’s capital of Hobart. He said he learned a lot about the United States.
“It was a great legal experience,” said Biedscheid, 50, who was sworn in Monday as a judge for First Judicial District’s Division VI, where he’ll oversee primarily civil cases.
“They were quite interested in an American law student. … I had a class where at the end of every class they would allow a student to ask me a question. Usually, it would be along the lines of, ‘How in the world can you defend American policy on X?’ And they would give me a bit of time to come up to speed on it … and I would come back and lead a discussion on that to start the class the next day. And I have to admit, I learned quite a bit about our country’s past and current policies.”
Biedscheid, who was appointed last month to fill a vacancy created by the January appointment of David Thomson to the state Supreme Court, said Australia’s justice system also influenced his thinking about the law and the approach he’ll take as a judge.
“The legal profession there is a little bit more pragmatic,” Biedscheid said in a recent interview from his new second-floor office in Santa Fe.
“They view themselves more as problem solvers, than ‘this is my client and I’m going in to mortal combat,’ and I have always found that an interesting thing to have in the back of my mind. Are we solving a problem by doing this, or are we just entrenching people in their positions?”
Biedscheid was 13 when his family moved from Florida to Albuquerque. He discovered Santa Fe as a law student working part-time for the former Public Utility Commission.
“That’s when I realized Santa Fe is where it’s at,” he said. “They don’t teach you that in Albuquerque.”
He and his wife agreed to move north when he finished law school in 1996, and he’s been here ever since.
Biedscheid worked at Catron, Catron and Sawtell law firm for six years before going into business with partners Tony Sawtell and current New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe.
While in private practice, Biedscheid said, he handled primarily civil cases, but was tapped more often in recent years to mediate cases and act as a guardian ad litem for children or incapacitated adults.
Biedscheid is one of four judges in the nine-judge First Judicial District assigned to handle civil cases. His docket will run the gamut from debt-collection cases to Whistleblower Act complaints, with a lot in between.
His docket Thursday included an auto injury case, two foreclosures and an application from someone seeking appointment as representative of a deceased person in order to file a wrongful death complaint against the nursing home where the person died.
Former Justice Charles Daniels — whose January retirement made room for Beidcheid’s predecessor to be appointed to the state Supreme Court — reflected Thursday on what it was like when he first became a judge decades ago.
“I remember being struck by how instantly people were treating me differently,” Daniels said. “There is a lot of bowing and scraping that goes on with being called a judge. Some of it is understandable because a judge has to be an authority figure in an often emotionally charged situation in the courtroom, a crucible of conflict.
“But some of it seems sort of excessive,” he said, “with all the old British titles, ‘your honor,’ and that sort of thing, and people rising when you walk into a room. That was something that had never happened in my lifetime, and this added a whole new dimension.”
Luckily, Daniels said, he had a family who wouldn’t let him forget he still had to take out the garbage and clean up after the dog.
Biedscheid has been married for 22 years to environmental engineer Jennifer Biedscheid. The couple have a 10-year-old daughter and two golden retrievers.
They own a small farm with friends near the community of Vallecitos on the High Road to Taos, where, Biedscheid wrote in his application, he is “fixated” on participating in the annual cleaning of the acequias.
“The ditch association meeting is this weekend,” he said Thursday. “And I’ll be the guy from our group that attends that.”
Making connections in the northern part of the First Judicial District — which includes the counties of Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos — will come in handy in 2020 when Biedscheid must run for election if he wants to keep the job.
The first-time judge has never campaigned for office, but feels he got taste of what it might be like while gathering letters of recommendation in support of his appointment.
“Getting those to [Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham] and talking to her about her interests and concerns was a good introduction to talking to people you don’t know well and explaining what you think,” he said.
State district judges are paid about $120,000 per year and serve six-year terms. If Biedscheid is elected in 2020, he’ll have to be affirmed by 57 percent of voters in a retention election every six years thereafter to stay on the bench.
