After four years as a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering officer and 20 years as a trial attorney in Kansas’s state and federal courts, Hon. Lawton R. Nuss (ret.) was appointed to serve as a justice on the Kansas Supreme Court in 2002. He became its chief justice in 2010. For the next 10 years, Chief Justice Nuss led the supreme court in exercising administrative authority over nearly 300 judges and 1,600 employees handling 400,000 court cases each year. His leadership was commended at both the state and national level, highlighted by an invitation to present a leadership program to his fellow state supreme court chief justices at their national conference. He retired with three years left in his term to devote more time to helping his fellow veterans and working to expand veterans treatment courts.

Chief Justice Nuss is the chair of the board of directors for the Veterans Court Coalition, a member of the advisory committee to the Veterans Justice Commission for the Council on Criminal Justice, and a member of the advisory board of the Veterans Legal Support Clinic at the University of Kansas School of Law. He has received the law school’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, its highest honor, and has also received the highest award of the Kansas Bar Association, reserved for those who have performed outstanding and conspicuous service at the state, national, or international level in administration of justice.