Judge Brewer receives Bar award
Chancellor Cynthia L. Brewer of Madison will be honored for her exemplary work and service as a role model for women in the legal profession.
The Women in the Profession Section of the Mississippi Bar selected Judge Brewer as the 2025 recipient of the Susie Blue Buchanan Award. The award will be presented on July 10 at the Price-Prather Luncheon during the Mississippi Bar Convention in Sandestin, Fla. The annual award honors an outstanding woman lawyer who has achieved professional excellence and has actively paved the way to success for other women lawyers.
Judge Brewer said, “To be recognized among my peers for the work that I have diligently and with love done, is beyond words wonderful. I’m still in awe.”
The award is named for Susie Blue Buchanan of Brandon, who in 1916 became the first woman lawyer qualified to practice before the Mississippi Supreme Court. The Price-Prather Luncheon, now in its 27th year, is named for the state’s first woman judge, Washington County Court Judge Zelma Wells Price of Greenville, and the first Mississippi woman chancellor, Supreme Court Justice and Chief Justice, Lenore Loving Prather of Columbus. Chief Justice Prather received the Susie Blue Buchanan Award in 2005.
Among other former recipients of the award are former Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy, Mississippi Court of Appeals Chief Judge Donna Barnes, former Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Mary Libby Payne, the late Presiding Justice Kay Cobb, the late law professor Carol West, former Justice Ann Lamar, former Justice Dawn Beam, Chancellor Jacqueline Mask, former Chancellor Denise Owens, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown, U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson.
Judge Brewer is senior chancellor of the 11th Chancery Court, hearing cases in Madison and Leake counties. She became a chancellor in January 2007. She served twice as chair of the Conference of Chancery Court Judges, having been elected by her colleagues. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the Mississippi Judicial College. She served on the Commission on Judicial Performance as the alternate Chancery Court member. She previously served for four years as Madison County Court Judge, where her duties also included part of the docket for the Madison County Youth Court. She also previously served as a special master in Chancery Court, and as a Municipal, County and Youth Court prosecutor in Hinds County.
Judge Brewer earned her undergraduate degree from the University of South Alabama, and her Juris Doctor from Mississippi College School of Law. She is a visiting instructor at the National Judicial College in Reno. She previously served as an adjunct professor at Mississippi College School of Law.