Stephen Reinhardt

Stephen Reinhardt
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Assumed office
September 11, 1980
Nominated by Jimmy Carter
Preceded by Seat established
Personal details
Born (1931-03-27) March 27, 1931
New York, New York, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Alma mater Pomona College
Yale Law School

Stephen Roy Reinhardt (born March 27, 1931) is a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with chambers in Los Angeles, California. He is the only appeals court judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter (in 1980) to remain in active service.

Early life, education, and practice

Born to a Jewish family,[1] Reinhardt graduated from University High School in Los Angeles. He enrolled in Pomona College and graduated three years later with a B.A. in Government in 1951. In 1954, he received an LL.B. from Yale Law School.

After law school, Reinhardt worked at the legal counsel’s office for the United States Air Force as a lieutenant in Washington, D.C.. Two years later, he clerked for district judge Luther Youngdahl, a former governor of Minnesota, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He then entered private practice, working for the law firm O'Melveny & Myers from 1958 to 1959 practicing entertainment law. After two years at O'Melveny, he began working at a small firm in Los Angeles that became Fogel, Julber, Reinhardt, Rothschild & Feldman, specializing in labor law.

Reinhardt served as a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, California Advisory Committee from 1962 to 1974 and was its vice chairman from 1969 to 1974. He also served as member of the Democratic National Committee and as an unpaid advisor to former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and California governor Jerry Brown. In 1975 he was appointed to the Los Angeles Police Commission, which he chaired from 1978 until his judicial confirmation in 1980.

Reinhardt continued his public service as Secretary of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Amateur Athletic Foundation.

Reinhardt administered the oath of office to former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on July 1, 2005.[2]

Personal life

Reinhardt's mother divorced his father and married movie director Gottfried Reinhardt, the son of director Max Reinhardt. Stephen Reinhardt is married to Ramona Ripston, who was Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California[3] until her February 2011 retirement. Reinhardt has three children.

Judicial career

Reinhardt is known as one of the most liberal judges on the courts of appeals. His decisions are "reversed more often than most" judges before the Supreme Court.[4] In 2003, Reinhardt admitted that he "was a liberal from a very young age." "I think I was born that way", he said.[5] However, he does not believe that a Supreme Court reversal means that his opinion is wrong or that he didn't follow the law, per se. "The Supreme Court changes the law regularly. And this Supreme Court - which is the most activist Court there has ever been - is constantly changing the law. So if you really are faithful to the law, you're likely to get reversed because it [the Court] has cut back on rights."[5] His reversal rate has not affected his status as a feeder judge—between 2009 and 2013, he placed six of his clerks on the Supreme Court, tied for the tenth highest number during the same time period.[6]

Reinhardt's former clerk, Cornell law professor Michael Dorf said that when Reinhardt "believes himself clearly bound by Supreme Court precedent with which he disagrees, he states his disagreement but follows the precedent." Dorf accounts for Reinhardt's reversal rate by stating that "Reinhardt resolves cases under existing precedent as he believes those precedents should be read, without regard to whether five or more Justices of the Supreme Court are likely to reverse him."[7]

Examples of opinions he wrote for the Ninth Circuit that were reversed are:

The following are some of his more notable judicial opinions:

  • The INS had conflated two different routes for seeking asylum and had improperly rejected an application made under one route based on the requirements of the second. This decision was upheld by the Supreme Court.
  • Standard to obtain asylum.
  • The English-only provision in the Arizona constitution was overly broad and violated the First Amendment right of free speech. This decision was vacated by the Supreme Court as moot because plaintiff Yniguez had voluntarily left the employment of the State of Arizona the day after the appeal was filed. 530 US 43. Justice Ginsburg's unanimous opinion for the Court also took a swipe at the Ninth Circuit for failing to certify this question to the state courts, holding that "A more cautious approach was in order. In addition, footnote 11 of Justice Ginsburg's decision chides the Ninth Circuit for failing to recognize that state courts are not bound by decisions of federal courts (except the Supreme Court), even on questions of federal law.
  • The Sixth Amendment right to counsel can be infringed if counsel has a conflict of interest, even if the defendant has waived the conflict.
  • A statute prohibiting doctors from prescribing life-ending medication for the terminally ill violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997).
  • An alien cannot be held indefinitely in detention in the absence of a repatriation agreement with his or her country of origin.
  • The right to bear arms is a collective right, not an individual right. This ruling was overruled by the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008).
  • Forfeiture of the shark fins was denied on the grounds that, although according to the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 any shark fins found aboard a fishing vessel without a corresponding shark carcass may be deemed the product of illegal harvesting, the vessel from which the fins were seized was not in fact a fishing vessel within the meaning of the act. The fins had been harvested by, and bought from, other vessels.
  • In his role as Chair of the Ninth Circuit’s Standing Committee on Federal Public Defenders, Reinhardt ruled that the application of the Defense of Marriage Act in denying health insurance benefits to Levenson's same-sex spouse violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
  • Writing for the majority, Reinhardt held that Proposition 8 violated the Equal Protection Clause because California had no rational basis for withdrawing the right to marry from gays and lesbians.

Awards

Reinhardt has received the following awards:

References

  1. ↑ Washington Post: "“Mondoweiss” is a hate site (Update)" by David Bernstein May 4, 2015
  2. ↑ "Reinhardt to give Antonio the oath". LA Observed. 2005-06-30. Retrieved 2006-06-14.
  3. ↑ "Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, ACLU of Southern California Appointed to the State Commission on Judicial Performance". ACLU of Southern California. 1998-07-20. Archived from the original on 2006-05-01. Retrieved 2006-06-14.
  4. ↑ Farnsworth, Ward (2006). "The Role of Law in Close Cases: Some Evidence From the Federal Courts of Appeals". Boston University Law Review. 86. pp. 1083, 1090.
  5. 1 2 Blum, Bill (2003-02) The Last Liberal, California Lawyer Archived October 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Stras, David (Fall 2014). "Secret Agents: Using Law Clerks Effectively". Marquette Law Review. 98: 157.
  7. ↑ Dorf, Michael (2010-12-02) Hail to the Chief Justice of the Warren Court in Exile, Dorf on Law
  8. ↑ "Oregon Supreme Court Justice Will Address 2004 UO Law Commencement". University of Oregon. 2004-05-12. Archived from the original on 2006-09-03. Retrieved 2006-06-14.
Legal offices
New seat Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
1980–present 		Incumbent
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