Associate Justice Sydney Hanlon
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Justice Sydney Hanlon grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Brown University in 1972 and from Harvard Law School in 1975. She then became an assistant district attorney in Norfolk County, where she headed the Sexual Assault Unit from 1977 to 1982. In 1982 she became an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston, where she was assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 1987 she left that position to become an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth, and formed a drug crime unit within that office. In 1990 Governor Michael Dukakis appointed her to the Dorchester District Court; Justice Hanlon became First Justice of that court in 1994. In 1992 District Court Chief Justice Samuel Zoll appointed Justice Hanlon as chair of the District Court Domestic Violence Committee. She also served as a member of the District Court Education Committee between 1992 and 2003, when the Dorchester District Court became part of the Boston Municipal Court Department; she later chaired the Boston Municipal Court Education Committee. In 1999, the United States Department of Justice Violence Against Women selected the Dorchester Court as one of three sites in the nation for a Judicial Oversight Demonstration Initiative; that project examines the value of close judicial and probation oversight of convicted domestic violence offenders. In 2001 Justice Hanlon traveled to Irkutsk, Russia, as part of a domestic violence training team, and in 2004 she traveled to Tomsk, Russia, as part of a group sent by the Russian-American Rule of Law Consortium. She has conducted many training programs for court personnel at the invitation of organizations such as the Battered Women's Justice Project, the American Probation and Parole Association, and the Violence Against Women Office of the Department of Justice. Appointed to the Appeals Court by Governor Deval Patrick, Justice Hanlon joined the court on April 29, 2009.