Judge recounts an interesting life of public service

South Carolina’s mandatory retirement law for judges cost West Union’s Alex Macaulay his full-time seat as a circuit court judge back in 2014, but he remains active today as a fill-in jurist when his services are needed. But apart from his duty to judge criminal and civil matters, Macaulay’s adult life has been spent in a variety of public service work—including service as a state lawmaker and a state board of education member. As he told the Walhalla Rotary Club today, “I have had an interesting life.” Much of his life has been spent having a hand in some of the major growth that Oconee County has experienced in the last 50 years. Before he joined the Pat Miley law firm in Walhalla in 1973, Macaulay was an assistant South Carolina attorney general who was assigned to litigate several property condemnation proceedings that helped clear the way to build highway 11 and widen highway 28 to a four-lane roadway between Seneca and Walhalla. These days, however, Macaulay is best known as a circuit court judge. He was asked by Rotarian if it bothered him to have to allow someone to go free based on a technicality. But the trait of evenhandedness is a quality that Macaulay embraces. He called his questioner’s attention to the Bill of Rights which delineates some of the more important rights an individual can have when it comes to a conflict between that individual and government.