Judge Ruby Kless Sondock Lectureship in Legal Ethics Jurist-in-Residence
Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Interpreting the Laws of Congress: A Conversation

Robert A. Katzmann is Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At his appointment to the federal bench in 1999, he was Walsh Professor of Government, Professor of Law, and Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University; a Fellow of the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution; and president of the Governance Institute.

A lawyer and political scientist by training, Judge Katzmann received his A.B. (summa cum laude) from Columbia College, A.M. and Ph.D in government from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Article and Book Review Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, he joined the Brookings Institution, where he was a research associate, senior fellow, visiting fellow, and acting program director. His books include: Judging Statutes; Regulatory Bureaucracy; Institutional Disability; Courts and Congress; editor and project director of The Law Firm and the Public Good; co-editor of Managing Appeals in Federal Court; editor and contributing author of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life; and editor and contributing author of Judges and Legislators. He conceived of the Immigrant Justice Corps, the country’s first fellowship program dedicated to meeting the need for high-quality legal assistance for immigrants. He chaired the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on the Judicial Branch.

Judge Katzmann received the American Political Science Association’s Charles E. Merriam Award, is a recipient of the 2012 Learned Hand Medal of the Federal Bar Council, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.