Michael P. Boggs, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, will discuss “Behavioral Health Issues and the Criminal Justice System” at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 26, in Valdosta State University’s Student Union Theater.

Boggs’s visit to campus is sponsored by VSU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Admission is free of charge and open to the public.

Former Governor Nathan Deal appointed Boggs to the Supreme Court of Georgia on Dec. 7, 2016. Voters re-elected him to the position in 2018, and his colleagues unanimously elected him chief justice in March 2022.

In addition to his role on the Supreme Court of Georgia, Boggs currently serves as a member of Governor Brian Kemp’s Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, where he serves as chairman of the Mental Health Courts and Corrections Subcommittee. Kemp also appointed him to the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission and as chairman of the American Rescue Plan Act Funding Committee of the Judicial Council of Georgia, which was established to assist courts in addressing case backlogs resulting from the global pandemic known as COVID-19.

Raised in Waycross, Boggs earned his Juris Doctor in 1990 from Mercer University School of Law. He practiced insurance defense litigation in Atlanta before returning to his hometown and starting a general civil trial practice. In 2000 he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, where he served on the Judiciary, Public Safety, and Government Affairs committees and as chairman of the Probate Law and Elections Law subcommittees.

In 2004 Boggs was elected Superior Court judge for the six-county Waycross Judicial Circuit, and he founded the Waycross Judicial Circuit Drug Court Program. He served as a member of Georgia’s Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform in 2011, as judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia from 2012-2016, and as co-chairman of the Georgia Criminal Justice Reform Council from 2012 to 2018.