When she accepted the assignment of People's Court judge in early 2001 (a post inherited from Judge Jerry Sheindlin), Judge Marilyn Milian made history as the first female justice of Hispanic-American origin to emcee her own television series. A native of Queens, NY, Milian moved to Miami with her family at the age of eight, and after high school attended the University of Miami as a pre-law student, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. Milian earned her law degree from Georgetown, then returned to Florida and began working her way up through the annals of the court system, from Assistant State Attorney for the Dade County State Attorney's Office (1984-1994) to a five-year stint on the bench in the criminal and civil arenas of the County Court (1994-1999) to two years on the Miami Circuit Court (1999-2001), an appointment she received from Governor Jeb Bush. Milian left the Circuit Court in 2001 to take the People's Court assignment, and in that venue distinguished herself from many of her competitors by moderating trials and issuing verdicts in a sharp, acerbic, and witty vein -- one that often found Milian tossing off her Cuban grandmother's quirky Spanish idioms when sentencing criminals.
by Nathan Southern
biography
