Justice Barbara J. Pariente

Justice Pariente has been a Justice since 1997 and served as Chief Justice from 2004 through 2006. She was born in New York City in 1948 and attended public schools in New York and New Jersey.  She graduated with highest honors from Boston University majoring in communications.  She then attended George Washington University Law School, where she graduated fifth in her class in 1973, earning highest honors and membership in the Order of the Coif.  She moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1973 for a two year judicial clerkship with United States District Court Judge Norman C. Roettger, Jr., of the Southern District of Florida.

After her judicial clerkship, Justice Pariente settled in West Palm Beach, where she joined the law firm of Cone, Wagner and Nugent in 1975 and became a partner in 1977.  In 1983, she formed the law firm of Pariente & Silber, P.A. In both firms, she specialized in civil trial litigation.  She earned certification by the Florida Bar as a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer as well as nationally by The National Board of Trial Advocacy.  She was awarded an AV rating, the highest available, by Martindale-Hubbell.  During her eighteen years in private practice, Justice Pariente served on the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Grievance Committee, the Florida Bar Civil Rules Committee, and the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Nominating Commission.  She was instrumental in organizing Palm Beach County's first Bench-Bar Conference.  She was a founding member and master of the Palm Beach County Chapter of the American Inns of Court, and was very active in the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, serving on its Board of Directors for many years.

In September 1993, Justice Pariente was appointed to the Fourth District Court of Appeal, where she served until her appointment as the seventy-seventh Justice of the Florida Supreme Court on December 10, 1997.  During her time on the Supreme Court, she has worked to improve methods for handling cases involving families and children in the courts.  She has served as both liaison and then the Chair of the Supreme Court's Steering Committee on Families and Children in the Courts.  In that role, she met with family court judges and staffs throughout Florida's judicial circuits, promoted judicial education on the unified family court and advocated for improved case management, case coordination, and non-adversarial methods of resolving these disputes.  From 2000-2002, she was a member of the Florida Bar's Commission on the Legal Needs of Children.  In 1999 she served on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Character Education, where she focused on promoting civic education.

Justice Pariente has also actively supported programs that promote successful alternatives to incarceration such as Florida's drug courts.  From 1998 onward, she served as the liaison to the Supreme Court's Task Force on Treatment-Based Drug Courts and she helped to organize the first statewide conference on drug courts.  Justice Pariente speaks throughout the state on professionalism, judicial independence, the unified family court, juvenile justice and crime prevention.

Based on her longstanding commitment to children, Justice Pariente remains involved as a mentor to school-age children.  She currently serves as a mentor to students through Take Stock in Children, a program for helping economically disadvantaged students earn a college scholarship. Her current mentee is a high school senior. She is proud that another mentee, whom she began mentoring in ninth grade, has since graduated from college and is contemplating a career in the law.

Justice Pariente is a recipient of the 2007 Florida Justice Association's Al J. Cone Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 George Washington University's Distinguished Alumni Award, the 2006 American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers' Jurist of the Year Award, the 2005 Florida Association of School Social Workers' Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2005 Florida Bar Public Interest Law Section's Hugh S. Glickstein Child Advocate of the Year Award, the 2005 Palm Beach County League of Women Voters Good Government Award, the 2004 William M. Hoeveler Judicial Professionalism Award of the Florida Bar's Committee on Professionalism, the 2004 Visionary Award of the Family Law Section of the Florida Bar, the Jewish Museum of Florida's 2002 Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award, the 2000 Florida Council on Crime and Delinquency Distinguished Judicial Service Award, the 2001 Florida Association of Women Lawyers' Award in recognition of lifelong dedication to the success of women lawyers in the legal profession,  the 1998 American Bar Association's Law Day Speech Award, the 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Palm Beach County Jewish Federation and the 1993 Legal Aid Society Civil Litigation Pro Bono Award.

In March 2008, Pariente was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame by Gov. Charlie Crist.

Justice Pariente's past publications include a contribution to the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender entitled “A Symposium with Women Chiefs” at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Volume 13, No. 2 (April 2007); a contribution to Women Trial Lawyers: How They Succeed in Practice and in the Courtroom (Prentice-Hall 1987). In addition, she authored an article in the Florida Bar Journal entitled "A Profession for the New Millennium: Restoring Public Trust and Confidence in Our System of Justice." 74 Fla. B.J. 50 (January 2000) and most recently, co-authored an article in the Florida Bar Journal entitled "Teaching Them a Lesson," 77 Fla. B.J. 6 (June 2003). The latter is about girls in the Juvenile Justice system.

Justice Pariente is married to the Honorable Frederick A. Hazouri, judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeal. Together, they have three married children and seven grandchildren, all of whom live in Florida.  In 2003, Justice Pariente shared with the public her successful treatment for breast cancer, in hopes of promoting greater awareness of this disease that strikes one in eight American women.

Read a Conversation with Justice Pariente by Jodi Wilkof, a Profile of Justice Pariente published in the October 2004 Bar Journal, and an article on her in the Bostonia alumni magazine.

Justice Pariente's office may be reached in Tallahassee by phone at (850) 488-8421. The judicial assistant in Justice Pariente's office is Brenda Williams and the law clerks are Andrew Manko, Janice G. Scott, and Zainabu Rumala.  The mailing address is 500 South Duval Street, Tallahassee FL 32399-1925.

Attorneys or law students interested in clerkships in this office should check our Law Clerk Recruitment Page. There also is information on Internships.