State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nadeau announced yesterday that he will retire from the bench at the end of the year. Nadeau wants to free himself to do international pro bono work, including the possibility of helping Iraqi judges develop their country's new constitution.

Nadeau, 67, submitted his resignation to Gov. John Lynch three years shy of the state's mandatory retirement age for judges, giving the Democratic governor a chance to name his first Supreme Court justice. Then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, also a Democrat, tapped Nadeau for the Court in Jan. 2000, and he was sworn in two months later.

Nadeau has been active with the American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), a volunteer program that offers legal expertise and technical assistance and supports law reform across the region. Nadeau traveled to Slovakia for a week in June to help a group of 19 high-ranking Iraqi judges learn about a variety of judicial matters and help them draft proposals for sections of their new constitution.

While serving as chief justice of the Superior Court system and then as an associate and senior associate on the Supreme Court, Nadeau has tried to limit himself to one or two international trips a year. Last month, he attended an International Judicial Academy forum in The Hague, Netherlands. But he turned down a short-notice offer to travel to Jordan to provide additional assistance to Iraqi judges working on their constitution.

"I couldn't do it," said Nadeau, who was recently named to CEELI's national advisory board. "I just want to be available, and sometimes the notice is short. And I want to be able to do it without interrupting court activities, so it just seemed to me to be the right time to go."

On the Supreme Court, Nadeau authored a pair of June 2004 decisions that reaffirmed the principle of separation of powers in the state constitution, overturning legislative efforts to encroach on court powers.

One decision stripped some authority from a new Judicial Conduct Commission that had been set up by the Legislature in competition with the court's Judicial Conduct Committee. The other struck down a law that required the state bar association to poll its members every five years about whether membership should be mandatory, in conflict with a court rule requiring association membership for lawyers.

Nadeau's other majority opinions included a unanimous decision to open courtroom proceedings to TV cameras as well as a 4-1 decision to extend privacy rights by overturning a conviction for marijuana possession, in which the police had acted without a warrant in searching garbage bags that had been left outside a home on trash-collection day.

In a dissenting opinion, Nadeau joined with Justice Linda Dalianis in a 2002 follow-up to the landmark Claremont ruling of 1997 that had struck down the state's education-funding system and ordered the Legislature to adopt a new system. In their 2002 dissent, Nadeau and Dalianis argued that the laws on the books regarding testing and minimum school standards were sufficient, and that those who wanted the state to do more should look to the political system, not the courts.

Other judges and lawyers yesterday applauded Nadeau's decision to focus on international volunteer work. They described him as a man with an exceptional appetite for work and a natural sense of humanity, calling him a fair arbiter who cared about the effects his rulings had on the lives of real people.

On the Supreme Court specifically, Nadeau will be remembered for his role in helping implement the 3JX system - an abbreviated, three-justice format applied in certain cases, in an effort to cut down the wait time between an appeal filing and a decision - and working to mend the rift between the court and the Legislature.

Nadeau, who lives in Durham, said he will miss the privilege of serving on the Supreme Court. "We're the last word," he said. "Because of that, each of us feels the responsibility to make sure we get the right answer." He will also miss the camaraderie among the five judges and the invigorating legal debates between them, he said.

Before he joined the high court, Nadeau had accepted a maxim that each of the justices is a "20 percent" judge. "It wasn't long before I realized that's not accurate. I'm 100 percent judge, and there are five of us here," he said, referring to a collective "500 percent judge."

A Dover native, Nadeau graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Dartmouth College and Boston University School of Law. He practiced privately and served as Durham District Court judge until 1981, when he was named to the Superior Court bench. Among his various roles, he had perhaps his greatest impact as chief justice of the Superior Court system, a role he held from 1992 to 2000.

"He was an enormous innovator,"Superior Court Judge Robert Morrill said.

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