Anstead named Chief Justice.

The Jacksonville native's term begins July 1

Born and raised in a single-parent home in Jacksonville's Brentwood housing project during the Great Depression, Harry Lee Anstead began work at a young age, cutting lawns, moving, furniture, doing anything to help support his family and build a future career for himself as a lawyer.

Anstead, 64, advanced that career to the highest judicial office in state government on April 10 when the members of the Florida Supreme Court announced they had unanimously elected him chief justice for a two-year term beginning July 1.

Anstead will be Florida's 50th chief justice.

He said that the major priority of his administration will be maintaining the excellence of Florida's trial courts during a time of transition. Under a 1998 constitutional amendment, funding for many trial court programs will shift from county budgets to the state budget by 2004. Implementation of this change still must be worked out with the legislature.

"Florida's trial courts have been universally recognized as models in programs like treatment-based drug courts, mediation, and unified family courts, to name only a few," Anstead said. "My goal is to ensure that we maintain this standard of excellence during the reorganization of state courts mandated by the voters in 1998."

Other issues on the future Chief Justice's agenda include those affecting children in the courts, including possible reforms and heightened attention to the juvenile justice system.

"We in the justice system should feel privileged that our society has placed its most troubled children on our doorstep, and I am concerned that we respond effectively," Anstead said. "One of the most stirring pleas I have ever heard was the late Gov. Lawton Chiles' last 'state of the state' speech, in which he declared that the one overriding issue we face in Florida is the way we treat our children -- all of them."

Anstead worked his way through undergraduate and law school at the University of Florida, and he later earned a master of laws degree in the judicial process at the University of Virginia. Between undergraduate and law school, he served with the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C.

Anstead began his legal career as a trial and appellate attorney until he became a judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 1977, where he also served as chief judge, as well as serving from time-to-time as a circuit and county judge throughout the district. On August 29, 1994, he...