COLUMBIA, SC (July 24, 2026) – Wyche is pleased to announce that Justice Kaye Hearn has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI). Membership in the ALI is a singular professional distinction reserved for leading judges, lawyers, and legal scholars from across the United States and around the world.
Election to ALI is by confidential nomination and reflects professional excellence, high character, and a demonstrated commitment to improving the law. Members are selected based on their ability to contribute meaningfully to the Institute’s work of clarifying, simplifying, and reforming the law through its Restatements, Principles, and Model Codes.
“The election of new members is among the most important responsibilities of the Institute because it renews and strengthens the exchange of ideas that makes our work possible,” said ALI President Wallace B. Jefferson. “As I welcome my first class of new members as President, I do so with optimism and appreciation for the perspectives they will bring to the Institute. I look forward to seeing the meaningful ways these distinguished lawyers, judges, and scholars will contribute to the Institute’s projects, ensuring that ALI continues to serve the legal profession and the public.”
Kaye Hearn focuses her practice at Wyche on litigation and appellate advocacy. In April of 2023, Justice Hearn retired from the South Carolina Supreme Court. She was elected to the Supreme Court of South Carolina in May of 2009, becoming only the second woman member in the court’s history. Prior to her election to the state’s highest court, Hearn was a member of the South Carolina Court of Appeals for fifteen years, serving as its Chief Judge for ten years. During her tenure as Chief Judge, Hearn served as President of the Council of Chief Judges, a nationwide network of chief judges of the intermediate appellate courts. Before her election to the Court of Appeals in 1995, Justice Hearn had served as a Family Court Judge for almost 20 years. At the time of her retirement, Justice Hearn’s aggregate time on the bench made her the longest serving member of the South Carolina State Court Judiciary.
Prior to going on the bench, Hearn was a trial attorney with the firm of Stevens, Stevens, Thomas, Hearn & Hearn, and served as a member of the South Carolina Board of Bar Examiners. Immediately upon graduation from law school, she served as law clerk to South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Julius B. Ness. She is the only former law clerk to return to the Court as a Justice.
In 2004, Justice Hearn was honored with a portrait by the South Carolina’s Trial Lawyers Association. In 2010, she received the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association’s Jean Galloway Bissell Award; in 2011, she was honored with an award in celebration of Inspiring Women from Coastal Carolina University; and in 2012, Governor Nikki Haley presented her the Woman of Achievement Award from the South Carolina Commission on Women. In 2013, Hearn received the Bethany College Alumni Achievement Award and was named an Alpha Xi Delta Woman of Distinction. In 2022, she received the Outstanding Jurist Award from the American Board of Trial Advocates.
Justice Hearn received her B.A., cum laude, from Bethany College and her J.D., cum laude, from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She received an L.L.M. from the University of Virginia’s Graduate Program for Judges; an honorary Doctor of Laws from the Charleston School of Law; an honorary Doctor of Humanities from Francis Marion University; and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of South Carolina. Hearn has also been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America®, named to Columbia Business Monthly’s Legal Elite, honored as an “Icon” in South Carolina Lawyers Weekly’s SC Excellence in Law Awards, and received the Leading Woman Award from South Carolina Women in Leadership
