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Douglas H. Ginsburg
Ginsburg-Douglas.jpg
Official portrait, 2005
Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Assumed office
October 14, 2011
Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
In office
July 16, 2001 – February 11, 2008
Preceded by Harry T. Edwards
Succeeded by David B. Sentelle
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
In office
October 14, 1986 – October 14, 2011
Appointed by Ronald Reagan
Preceded by J. Skelly Wright
Succeeded by Cornelia Pillard
United States Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division
In office
1985–1986
Preceded by J. Paul McGrath
Succeeded by Charles Rule
Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
In office
1984–1985
President Ronald Reagan
Preceded by Christopher DeMuth
Succeeded by Wendy Lee Gramm
Personal details
Born (1946-05-25) May 25, 1946 (age 78)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Education

Douglas Howard Ginsburg (born May 25, 1946) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is also a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School.

Ginsburg was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, and he served as its chief judge from 2001 to 2008. In 1987, Reagan announced his intention to nominate Ginsburg as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. .....

Ginsburg took senior status in October 2011, and joined the faculty of New York University School of Law in January 2012. In 2013, he left NYU and began teaching at George Mason University. He is the author of scholarly works on U.S. antitrust law and constitutional law.

Early life and education

Ginsburg was born in Chicago in 1946 to Katherine (née Goodmont) and Maurice Ginsburg. He graduated from the Latin School of Chicago in 1963, then attended Cornell University. After dropping out in 1965 due to "boredom", he invested in and helped run Operation Match, an early computer dating service based in Boston, Massachusetts. Ginsburg returned to Cornell in 1968 after selling the company and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1970.

Ginsburg then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review along with future judge Frank Easterbrook. He graduated in 1973 with a Juris Doctor and membership in the Order of the Coif.

Career

After law school, Ginsburg was a law clerk for Judge Carl E. McGowan on the D.C. Circuit from 1973 to 1974 and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1974 to 1975. He then became a professor at Harvard Law School, where he taught labor law, administrative law, antitrust law, and other subjects.

In 1983, Ginsburg joined the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan as a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. In 1984, he became the administrator of the Executive Office of the President's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and in 1985 he was appointed Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division.

From 1988 to 2008, Ginsburg was an adjunct professor at the George Mason University School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School), where he taught a seminar called "Readings in Legal Thought". Until 2011 he was also a Visiting Lecturer and Charles J. Merriam Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School in Chicago, Illinois. Ginsburg has been a visiting professor at Columbia University Law School (1987–1988) and a visiting scholar at New York Law School (2006–2008).

Ginsburg is currently a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School. He was previously a visiting professor at University College London Faculty of Laws. He serves on the advisory boards of the Global Antitrust Institute (Chairman), the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics and the Centre for Law, Economics, and Society, both at University College London, Faculty of Laws; Competition Policy International; Journal of Competition Law & Economics; Journal of Law, Economics & Policy; Supreme Court Economic Review; University of Chicago Law Review; and the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

Federal judicial service

Ginsburg was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on September 23, 1986, to a seat on the District of Columbia Circuit vacated by Judge J. Skelly Wright. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 8, 1986, and received his commission on October 14, 1986. He served as Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit from 2001 to 2008, and he assumed senior status on October 14, 2011.

He was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 2001–2008, and previously served on its Budget Committee, 1997–2001, and Committee on Judicial Resources, 1987–1996; American Bar Association, Antitrust Section, Council, 1985–1986 (ex officio), 2000–2003 and 2009–2012 (judicial liaison); Boston University Law School, Visiting Committee, 1994–1997; and University of Chicago Law School, Visiting Committee, 1985–1988.

United States Supreme Court nomination

Ronald Reagan and Douglas Ginsburg
Ginsburg with President Ronald Reagan in 1987

On October 29, 1987, President Reagan announced his intention to nominate Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Lewis Powell, which had been announced on June 26. Ginsburg was chosen after the United States Senate, controlled by Democrats, had voted down the nomination of Judge Robert Bork after a highly controversial nomination battle which ended with a 42–58 rejection vote on October 23.

..... Ginsburg was also accused of a financial conflict of interest during his work in the Reagan Administration, but a Department of Justice investigation under the Ethics in Government Act determined the allegation was baseless.

Due to the allegations, Ginsburg withdrew his name from consideration on November 7, and remained on the Court of Appeals, serving as chief judge for most of the 2000s. Anthony Kennedy was then nominated on November 11 and confirmed in early February 1988 as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Personal life

Ginsburg married the public relations consultant Deecy Gray in 2007 in a ceremony at the U.S. Supreme Court performed by Chief Justice John Roberts. He has three daughters from two previous marriages.

See also

  • List of Jewish American jurists
  • List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 10)
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