Judge Barbara Rothstein Selected To Head Federal Judicial Center

The Board of the Federal Judicial Center has selected Judge Barbara J. Rothstein (W.D. Wash.) to be the ninth director of the Federal Judicial Center. Rothstein succeeds Judge Fern Smith (N.D. Calif.).

The Center, created by Congress in 1967, provides orientation and continuing education to federal judges and support personnel of the federal courts, and conducts research and analysis of federal court processes and operations, frequently at the request of committees of the Judicial Conference.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who chairs the Center’s statutory Board, said "The Board has every confidence that Judge Rothstein will be a worthy successor to Judge Fern Smith, whom I thank for her four years of dedicated service as Center director." Smith will return to San Francisco to resume sitting as a U.S. district judge.

Rothstein, 63, was appointed a U.S. district judge for the Western District of Washington in 1980, and served as chief judge of the district from 1987 to 1994. She has been a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction. Prior to her appointment to the federal bench, she was a state court judge and practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts, and with the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s office. She is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School.

The FJC’s first director was former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark. Two federal circuit judges, four federal district court judges, and a law professor have preceded Rothstein. The FJC (www.fjc.gov) is headquartered in the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building in Washington. Last year it provided some 685 educational programs reaching over 27,000 federal judge and court staff participants through traditional seminars as well as broadcasts on the Federal Judicial Television Network. The Center completed 22 major research and evaluation projects and responded to many other requests for short-term research assistance.

Two New Committee Chairs to Serve

Two new chairs of Judicial Conference committees have been named by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Judge James Robertson (D.D.C.) succeeds Judge Edwin L. Nelson as chair of the Information Technology Committee, effective immediately, with a term to expire October 1, 2004. Judge Simeon Timothy Lake III (S.D. Tex.) succeeds Chief Judge William Wilkins (4th Cir.) on April 1, 2003 as chair of the Committee on Criminal Law. His term will expire in 2005.

Robertson has been a member of the Information Technology Committee since 1996. The Committee, formerly the Committee on Automation and Technology, provides general policy recommendations, planning, and oversight of the Judiciary information technology program in addition to other IT responsibilities.

Judge James Robertson (D.D.C)  Judge Simeon T. Lake III (S.D.Tex.)

Robertson was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 1994. From 1969 to 1972, he was chief counsel for and then national director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights
Under Law, Washington, D.C. He was in private practice from 1972 to 1994.

Lake has been a member of the Criminal Law Committee since 1999. In addition to other responsibilities, the Criminal Law Committee oversees the federal probation and pretrial services system; reviews legislation and other issues relating to the administration of the criminal law; and provides oversight of the implementation of sentencing guidelines and makes recommendations to the Judicial Conference with regard to proposed amendments to the guidelines, including proposals that would increase their flexibility.

Lake was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in 1988. He had previously been in private practice.