Standards on Substance Use Disorders and Mental Health Conditions: In memoriam: Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants

Standards adopted by the Supreme Judicial Court, acting on the advice of the Working Group on Substance Use and Mental Health.

In a 2017 speech, Chief Justice Gants described our Commonwealth as "a team, comprised of our 6.8 million residents."  "If we lose any of our teammates – to  drug addiction, to disabling mental health, to despair," he said, "we deprive ourselves of their talents, of the work they otherwise could perform, of their potential for growth and maturity, and we therefore are poorer as a Commonwealth."

He was passionately committed to the principle that every person who appears in the Commonwealth's courts must be treated with dignity and respect, in recognition of our common humanity and the fact that "we are all interconnected, we are all part of the same team, and the successes or failures of one affect us all."

These Standards on Substance Use Disorders and Mental Health Conditions are evidence that Chief Justice Gants’s legacy lives on and will continue to guide our ongoing commitment to Justice with Dignity and Speed.  Chief Justice Gants established the SJC Working Group on Substance Use and Mental Health in furtherance of that principle. He recognized that judges and court staff must understand and apply the latest scientific knowledge concerning substance use disorders and mental health challenges to respond with intelligence and compassion to those afflicted with behavioral health challenges. He charged the Working Group with developing a new set of standards that incorporate best practices for reaching decisions involving litigants with substance use or mental health issues. Chief Justice Gants stressed the importance of systems collaboration and partnerships between the justice system and community-based treatment providers in the substance use, mental health and co-occurring disorders area.  Chief Justice Gants and his vision inspired the work of this committee to produce standards that will guide the courts as we continue our work to deliver justice to every individual we serve.