Superior Court Judge Mark Taylor. Courtesy photo

Judge Mark Taylor is entering his 17th year on the bench and has worked in the civil, family and criminal divisions.

But if it wasn't for a one-year stay in South Africa when he was 14 years old, his professional life might have turned out differently.

"There is a good chance I'd be doing something else today," the 64-year-old jurist said.

Taylor, his parents and three siblings, moved to Johannesburg for about one year in 1969-1970, because Taylor's father Kenneth had a sabbatical at his job with the World Council of Churches.

That experience, Taylor said, was not only eye-opening and depressing, but also led him to take a civil liberties course at Drew University. It sparked his interest in wanting to become an attorney, and Taylor eventually got his law degree in 1983 from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

"I saw firsthand a massive denial, a systematic denial, for the black population," said Taylor, who is white. "In that context, I saw the denial of civil liberties, which is why I took the civil liberties course in college. That course talked about what the U.S. Constitution stood for and that connected to me."

That year-plus stint in South Africa changed Taylor's life. It taught the young man that there was no equal protection and due process for most of the population, and made him realize the importance of justice and working in the legal profession.

"There were places where whites lived and where Africans, who were not white, lived. It was deplorable," he said. "I did write about apartheid in my English class as a teen in Johannesburg. They did not like it, and I was caned."

Taylor would later work briefly in private practice before spending 18 years in the Connecticut Legislature, including as chief legal counsel to Senate Democrats, and then 16 years on the bench.

"I came to understand and appreciate, later in my life, how critically important an independent and unbiased judiciary is to us at home, by providing the opportunity for individual justice under the law," Taylor told the Connecticut Law Tribune Wednesday.

Looking back at his years on the bench, Taylor said he got the most satisfaction out of presiding over civil cases, as opposed to criminal and family.

"There are complicated legal problems in criminal and family, but I find more diverse legal issues in civil," he said. "I like engaging about them, thinking about them and resolving them."

Some of the more difficult civil cases, Taylor said, revolve around foreclosures.

"In the end you end up having to remove people from their home and, sometimes, the alternative is not pleasant," Taylor said. "It's not easy, but I try to do it as humanely as possible. You give people enough time to move out and to make sure they have a plan; hopefully, they have a plan."

Judge Linda Lager, a senior jurist doing complex litigation docket work in Waterbury, has known Taylor the better part of 15 years.

"Judge Taylor is a compassionate, thoughtful and empathetic person, and as a judge, he is thoughtful and well-prepared," Lager said Wednesday. "He has the highest of integrity, and approaches his job with an open mind and with a respect for the law and the litigants appearing before him."

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