By admin 
This is the story of John Cannon Few, the only sitting State Supreme Court justice in 133 years not to get reelected.
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For 26 years Few viewed the courtroom from one angle – the judge’s bench. Before that, he clerked for a judge for a year, practiced with his father for eight years and was a sole practicioner for three years.
He’d been a trial judge for 10 years, an appeals court judge for six years and – for the last 10 years – a S.C. Supreme Court justice.
He’s written perhaps 200 majority opinions on subjects large and small, from the Confederate flag to the death penalty to open courts – issues that helped shape South Carolina’s history.
He’s weighed in on hundreds of other high court rulings.
He’s sentenced three men to death.
Now Few, 63, is going back to his beginnings – a sole practitioner in the legal arena, a lawyer representing clients in whatever cases strike his fancy.
His one-man office, bedecked with paintings and mementos like a Gurkha knife and a Bible, he’s partial to Matthew, is on Richland Street, a little more than a mile from the Supreme Court where he wore a black robe and rendered justice.
What kind of law will he practice? State or federal courts? Civil or criminal? In court as a trial lawyer or working on appeals?
“All of the above,” Few said with a smile.
Does he know how to set a fee?
He’ll figure that out, he said.
Few made his announcement about opening a Columbia office this week.
Is he nervous?
“It’s a little daunting, but I’m being very deliberate, so as to make sure I don’t get out there ahead of myself. I’m learning the software. I’m reading cases out of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. I’ve got plenty of time to ramp up to full speed.”
He’s in the process of looking for an associate.
The name of his firm?
“It’s not going to be like ‘Few & Jones,’ it’ll be ‘John Cannon Few LLC’.” Few says.
Prominent Columbia lawyer Pete Strom says, “I see Few taking corporate clients but some causes as well. He’s going to be very quickly one of the most sought-after lawyers in the state.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Kittredge said, “Given his (Few’s) legal skill and ability my strong sense is that he will be a superb lawyer.”
Rendezvous with history
A year ago Few was in line to be the next chief justice on the five-member Supreme Court and was running for a second 10-year term in an election to be held in March. The 170-member Legislature elects judges and justices.
Few was on track to succeed Kittredge, who turns 70 this month, as chief justice. Mandatory retirement age is 74. Ordinarily justices work their way up to chief as more senior justices become chief and then retire.
The only criticisms made public about Few were to the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, the judicial screening body. Some anonymous lawyers found him to be “arrogant” and “condescending” – criticisms Few answered by saying his “passion and enthusiasm” for the law sometimes comes across the wrong way because he is so engaged in getting to a case’s core issue. And he’s working to improve his temperament, he said.
Countering criticism of an abrasive style were numerous positive anonymous recommendations submitted to the Judicial Merit Selection Commission by other lawyers – “One of the best combinations of judicial temperament, intellectual prowess, and trial and appellate experience we have on the bench”
In statements to the commission, eminent people in law enforcement and legal fields endorsed Few:
“He’s as able, well-qualified and battle-tested as any judge I know in our state,” wrote former judge and state lawmaker Gary Clary, now Clemson University’s jurist in residence.
“I have appeared before many good judges on the state and federal benches. I would struggle to think of one more dedicated to the principles of fairness, humility and branch integrity than John Few,” wrote former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-Spartanburg, who has known Few since law school and practiced before him numerous times.
In presiding over grand jury investigations as a judge, Few demonstrated a “thorough understanding of complex evidence, legal procedures and the critical importance of due process,” said Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey, former S.C. Sheriff of the Year who was a SLED agent when he met Few.
Opposition to Few
Lawmakers – the ones who would be voting on Few’s candidacy – weren’t pleased, however, with two high court decisions in which Few played a role. In one, Few joined two other justices to overturn a 6-week abortion law. In the other, Few joined other justices in striking down a law in which lawmakers voted themselves an increase in compensation in the middle of a legislative session.
Lawmakers opposing Few came to support former S.C. House Speaker Jay Lucas, a Prisma Health government affairs executive with no state judicial experience, to run against Few. They said that Lucas had the correct outlook and non-judicial experience needed on the high court.
“Jay Lucas is the most proven, conservative voice for the bench,” said influential House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.
Smith strongly disagreed with a January 2023 decision in which Few joined. The decision struck down a General Assembly law that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
“Today’s decision fails to respect the concept of separation of powers and strips the people of this state from having a say in a decision that was meant to reflect their voices,” said Smith.
Behind the scenes, Lucas and his supporters who included Smith gathered a majority of the 170 lawmakers needed to win a seat.
tw Seeing he couldn’t win, Few said, he exited the race the day before the election.
Few’s last-minute withdrawal canceled the election. He served until July 31, when his term expired. Five judges have filed for Few’s open seat; the election will be held March 3. Lucas was not among the candidates.
Only first time in 133 years
Few’s exit from the high court race was only the first time since 1893 in state Supreme Court history that a sitting justice did not win reelection, says Rob Wilcox, a former dean of the USC Rice School of Law and historian of the S.C. Supreme Court Historical Society.
“It’s a significant event that John Few didn’t win,” Wilcox said.
In August, at a meeting in the Supreme Court courtroom to commemorate Few’s service on the high court and to celebrate high court history, one of Few’s close friends gave a speech about the former justice.
The speech, by lawyer Tom Mullikin who is also head of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, was about how the best judges are marked by the courage to do the right thing, no matter what the cost.
“Every judge understands that one opinion can end friendships, and one ruling can cost careers,” Mullikin told the crowd of approximately 100 that included a retired justice – Kaye Hearn and three retired chief justices – Costa Pleicones, Jean Toal and Don Beatty.
“The American legal system was never designed to produce popular judges. It was designed to produce independent judges,” Mullikin said. “… The easiest thing in public life is to tell people what they already believe. The hardest thing is to tell them what the law requires.”
Mullikin later made it clear to a reporter that he was referring to controversial decisions — including abortion and compensation — in which Few played a role.
‘The elephant in the room’
After Mullikin’s speech, Wilcox told a reporter that Mullikin’s speech about courage and independence caught the essence of why Few is no longer on the court without getting into politics or personalities.
“That was sort of the elephant in the room,” Wilcox said. “Tom did a very nice job of addressing the issue without turning it into a rant or anything. He just talked about the value of having independence on the court. Everybody knew what he was talking about.”
Mullikin was saying “what we need is justices who will vote what they believe the law requires, not what the popular opinion at the moment is,” Wilcox said.
‘Badge of honor’
Recently, a reporter asked Few if he knew his decisions might cause the General Assembly to try to oust him. After all, the two other justices who joined him in the abortion decision – Beatty and Hearn – were retiring.
Few – the only justice up for reelection – was the sole person lawmakers could focus their ire on.
“Yes,” he said, he knew it might cost him his job.
Did he regret losing his job and a chance to be chief justice because of those two decisions?
“No,” said Few.
“I consider it a badge of honor.”
‘Courage of a lawyer’
In Few’s office, there is an eye-catching 5 feet by 3 feet painting of a young girl and the phrase “Courage of a Lawyer.” She holds the scales of justice.
There’s a story here. When Few was a trial judge, the girl was a key witness in a case where she had been held prisoner and sexually assaulted for months. When it came time to testify, with the help of Few and her lawyers, she overcame her fears and sent the perpetrator to prison.
Few was so impressed with the girl’s courage, he shared her story with a Greenville artist. Also impressed, the artist did a painting with a fictionalized depiction of the girl. Few paid the artist $2,500 for the work.
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To Few, courage is one of the essences of a great lawyer.
Over the years, he’s given dozens and dozens of speeches in numerous states celebrating what he calls the “courage of a lawyer.” He’s had articles published in legal journals about how it takes the moral courage of people such as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and U.S. District Judge Waties Waring of Charleston who used the law to make bold steps in dismantling segregation in education.
Few holds that if a lawyer shows courage, that act emboldens others to do the right thing in difficult situations.
He cites the example of Frank L. Eppes, a Greenville attorney, who went out of his way to right a wrong done to a defendant and got his sentence reduced from 20 years to nine years. Eppes had inherited his courage from his father, Frank Eppes Sr., a man who knew that every lawyer has a “special responsibility” for the quality of justice, Few wrote in a legal journal.
“We draw a great and rare courage from each other,” Few wrote. “Our courage lives on.”
Teaching and giving back
Shortly after becoming a state judge in 2000, Few attended classes at the National Judicial College, a school for judges, in Reno, Nevada. He wound up in a heated argument over a legal point with one of the teachers, an esteemed visiting judge. “He literally did not know what he was talking about,” Few recalls.
Later, the school’s administrators sought Few out. He thought they were going to expel him. Instead, they offered him a job as a visiting legal professor.
It was the beginning of Few’s life as a teacher of the law.
Since then, he has taught at that Reno school and the Charleston Law School. In 2012, he began teaching at the University of South Carolina Rice School of Law.
He teaches an Advanced Evidence course once a week. It’s a complicated subject involving numerous rules and exceptions to the rules.
“Sometimes I leave there thinking I’m the stupidest lawyer on the planet because my class was so bad that day. And then other days I leave there going, that was just so much fun, and I’m just so pumped up about it. And so yeah, that’s why I teach. It’s important that I give back.”
In a recent class at the law school, Few spoke for more than an hour to more than 35 students with a PowerPoint but without notes. He stayed in motion, always looking out at the students, and using his hands to make points.
Evidence is one of the more complicated legal subjects for law students. Judges sometimes have a lot of discretion as to what evidence is admitted into a trial. Consequently, and this is one of Few’s points – lawyers who have worked the hardest to master arguments for their positions on evidence – will often succeed in getting the judge to agree with them.
Alan Medlin, a longtime USC Rice School of Law professor, said Few is a great asset to the law faculty.
Medlin says, “I’ve heard from any number of his students who think he’s an accomplished professor. They love his course.”
Few not only has a great judicial mind, says Medlin, but he has the mind of an academic, of a great teacher. Medlin says he had brought Few to his own classes over the years to talk about all kinds of legal subjects.
“He can handle any topic, cover any topic you want him to cover to inspire students, and he just knocks it out of the park. He has a desire to dig deep and learn everything you can learn about whatever it is you can dig into.”
William Hubbard, dean of the USC Rice School of Law, said Few’s class is “very important for students interested in trial work.”
“His classes are typically full, he teaches it in a very practical way, he brings a lot of experience to the task, and his experience gives him an authenticity that’s really valued,” Hubbard said.
Few’s teaching goes beyond the courtroom. Judges and justices traditionally have clerks – usually recent law school graduates.
When Greenville attorney Andy Moorman clerked for Few, then a judge, Moorman remembers Few’s guidance and encouragement.
“He really took it upon himself to teach you. He took it as part of the job as a judge to make better young lawyers,” Moorman said.
Some major decisions
Over the years, Few’s opinions have changed history. A sampling:
Open courts. In 2023 State v. Jeroid Price, Price was serving a 35-year sentence for murder but was secretly released by a state judge’s order 16 years early. In a 3-2 opinion, Few gave a ringing endorsement of a vital principle of American law: that courts are open and “thus, no court proceedings may be closed and no court records may be sealed from public view unless the closing or sealing is authorized by a specific provision of law.”
Murdaugh case. In this year’s State v. Richard “Alex” Murdaugh, Few joined the high court’s unanimous decision that overturned the high-profile and hugely expensive state prosecution of Alex Murdaugh, who had been convicted of the double murders of his wife and son. The reason: Jury tampering by former Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill denied Murdaugh’s right to a fair trial by an impartial jury.
Confederate flag. In the 2021 Pinckney v. Peeler lawsuit challenging the state’s Heritage Act’s requirement that a two-thirds supermajority of both the House and Senate is needed to alter historic structures, Few authored a unanimous opinion that did away with the supermajority requirement. One legislature cannot bind or limit a future legislature’s actions by requiring a supermajority, Few wrote. Few’s opinion is noteworthy in its citations of numerous journalistic sources that evoked the charged passions of the multiyear battle over the Confederate flag.
Death penalty. In a 2024 opinion, Owens v. Stirling, Few joined by two other justices found South Carolina’s three death penalty choices – electrocution, lethal injection and firing squad – constitutional.
Few didn’t always prevail. In his first and last Supreme Court cases, he wound up on the losing side and penned a dissent.
Renaissance person
Few was born into a legal family. His late father, Kendall Few, was a driven perfectionist known for successful lawsuits challenging automobile manufacturers’ safety standards and his numerous speeches in the law and trial strategy.
Few is driven, too, but the law is not the only thing in his life.
He’s a fly-fisherman and canoeist from childhood. He recently spent a week on an Idaho river learning advanced fly-fishing techniques. “Even if you struggle with catching fish, you’re still going to be in a beautiful place,” he says. He has five canoes and can shoot, he says, Class IV rapids.
At Duke (he graduated in 1985), he was the “Blue Devil” – the mascot for the football and basketball team games and the equivalent of the USC’s “Cocky” mascot.
He’s a history buff to whom one of South Carolina’s greatest political figures last century – James Byrnes, a segregationist who became a U.S. Senator, U.S. Supreme Court justice, secretary of state and governor – is an enduring mystery. “How could such an incredible statesman, who in every other respect seems to have been a good man, how could he be such a racist?” Few asks.
Asked about diversity on the bench, Few says that when lawyers and the public look at the five member Supreme Court, “It’s best when they see a reflection of the population that the court is there to serve.” Diversity also helps bring different viewpoints into the justices’ conferences, he says.
Few has been known to quote poetry from Robert Frost and passages from books, such as one found in the Wind in the Willows that ends, “the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
“He’s a Renaissance person,” says law professor Medlin, who’s known Few more than 40 years.
On occasion, he consults the artificial intelligence assistant Claude. Over the years, Few has given out his phone number for years to reporters, telling them to call him if they have a legal question about court decisions. He won’t comment “on the record,” but he’ll explain the law’s finer points on background.
There’s his family – he’s father and a grandfather.
Few and his wife, Karlen Senn, a Columbia trial lawyer, are expecting their first child in October. They got married in April 2025 on the front steps of the Supreme Court with Few’s fellow justice, George “Buck” James, officiating.
From a first marriage, Few has three adult children: Reed, 36, a Duke graduate and health care data scientist who lives in Durham with her husband and three children; Anna, 34, a Clemson graduate who is studying to be nurse anesthetist who also lives in Durham; Cannon, a Boston College graduate who sings on Spotify and is a therapist who lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
From a prior marriage, Senn has a sixth grade daughter who’s in school in Columbia.
Few and Senn have a 2-year-old black Labrador, Chauga, named after a river in Oconee County where they have a second home.
With everything going on from awaiting his next child to opening a law office, how does Few feel these days?
He said he’ll miss spending almost limitless amounts of time to get things right in a decision.
And he’ll miss the challenge of asking questions to lawyers during an argument and hearing their answers.
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“We don’t go in there with our minds made up,” said Few.
Otherwise, his mood is upbeat.
“Outstanding,” he says. “I’m excited about it.”