The Higher Education of the New Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court

Peggy A. Quince was elected chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. She will assume her new duties on July 1. She is the first black woman to hold the post.

Justice Quince is a native of Norfolk, Virginia, where she attended racially segregated schools. Her father worked as a longshoreman on the Norfolk waterfront. In 1970 Quince earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology at Howard University. She received her legal training at the Catholic University of America.

Quince briefly practiced law in Norfolk, Virginia, and Bradenton, Florida, before being hired as a prosecutor for the state attorney general specializing in death penalty cases. In 1993 she was appointed to the state appeals court bench. She was elevated to the state’s highest court in 1998 and participated in the rulings involving the 2000 presidential election in Florida which were later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.