I. Beverly Lake Jr.

In the late 1960s, Lake entered politics. Between 1969 and 1976, Lake served as an appointed deputy attorney general for the state of North Carolina. He served two terms in the North Carolina Senate as a Democrat. A conservative, in his last session in the legislature he convinced the body to remove segregation academies from state oversight.[4]

In October 1979 Lake announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination in the upcoming 1980 North Carolina gubernatorial election. A few days later he officially switched his partisan registration from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.[4] He ran as the unsuccessful nominee against incumbent Governor Jim Hunt. While not campaigning on segregation, he refused to eschew his father's politics, saying that he was "proud of his public record".[5]

From 1985 to 1986 Lake served as Governor James G. Martin's legislative liaison.[6] Lake ran for the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1990 but lost to incumbent John Webb, who he had attacked as being "soft on crime".[7] In 1992 Martin appointed Lake to the Supreme Court. He ran for election later that year but lost to Sarah Parker. In 1994 Lake re-contested the seat and defeated Parker with 55 percent of the vote. Along with Robert F. Orr, he became one of the first two Republicans elected to the bench.[8]

He was elected as the court's chief justice in 2000, defeating incumbent Henry Frye. The two maintained cordial relations and occasionally golfed together.[5] In April 2002 the court ruled that legislative districts drawn by Democratic legislative leaders violated North Carolina's constitution for not respecting county boundaries. Lake authored the majority opinion, writing that "Enforcement of the [whole counties provision] will, in all likelihood, foster improved voter morale, voter turnout, and public respect for state government, and specifically, the General Assembly, as an institution."[9]

While serving as chief justice, a series of high-profile wrongful convictions in North Carolina came to his attention. He reviewed several of the cases with his clerk and resolved that the criminal justice system required reform. In 2002, he convened a commission including defense attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officers to review how innocent people were convicted and how to exonerate them. The body released a study which led to the creation of a new government agency, the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, in 2006. It was designed to review convictions and release persons found innocent.[10] By North Carolina law, he had to step down in 2006, after his 72nd birthday. He was succeeded by then-Associate Justice Sarah Parker.