By Michael Gremer, UIC Law Student and Allison K. Bethel, Professor and Director, UIC Law Fair Housing Legal Clinic Spotlight on Homelessness

New Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr., grew up in the Chicago Bronzeville neighborhood under challenging circumstances. As recounted in “Ready To Serve,” the Illinois Bar Journal’s December profile of the chief justice, those years “were challenging for his family and especially his mother, a schoolteacher,” Chief Justice Neville says. “But I maintain that those very difficult times made me the kind of person I am. I often say I grew up on the rough side of the mountain,” he says. “But it is pressure that turns coal into diamonds.

“Lawyers often regard procedural history as a formality and as something to endure, like the seat-belt announcement on an airplane,” writes Justice Michael B.