David F Levi

Education

Levi was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father was Edward H. Levi, a former president of the University of Chicago and United States Attorney General under President Gerald R. Ford. He received an Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University, in History and Literature (magna cum laude) in 1972 and then entered the graduate program in history at Harvard where he eventually specialized in English legal history, receiving a Master of Arts. He received his Juris Doctor in 1980 from the Stanford Law School, where he graduated Order of the Coif and was President of the Stanford Law Review.

Career

From 1980 to 1981, Levi served as clerk for Judge Ben C. Duniway of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and from 1981 to 1982 as clerk for Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell. In 1983, he joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California as a prosecutor. In 1986 he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California. Levi directed a major corruption investigation involving several California legislators and was also a member of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee and Chair of the Public Corruption Committee of United States Attorneys.

Federal judicial service

Levi was nominated by President George H. W. Bush on August 3, 1990, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California vacated by Judge Edward Dean Price. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 28, 1990, and received commission on October 1, 1990. He served as Chief Judge from 2003 to 2007. His service terminated on June 30, 2007, due to resignation.

In 1994 Levi was appointed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He was appointed Chair of the Civil Rules Committee in 2000. In October 2003 he was appointed Chair of the Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure, which sits at the top of the federal judiciary's rulemaking process; in 2010 he was reappointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to serve as a member of that committee.

Other service

He was the first president and a founder of the Milton L. Schwartz American Inn of Court, now the Schwartz-Levi American Inn of Court, at the King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis, and has served as Chair of the Ninth Circuit’s Task Force on Race, Religious and Ethnic Fairness and as the President of the Ninth Circuit District Judges Association.

In 2005, Levi was elected to the Council of the American Law Institute (ALI) and currently is serving as its president. A member of the ALI since 1991, Judge Levi was an Adviser to its Federal Judicial Code Revision Project and an Adviser to the Institute’s new Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

He is coauthor of Federal Trial Objections (James 2002). In 2010, he was named to the board of directors of Equal Justice Works. He is on the Rehnquist Center's National Board of Advisers.

Personal

His brother, John G. Levi, introduced Barack and Michelle Obama. His cousin Daniel Meltzer is a former White House Counsel. His great-grandfather was A.G. Becker.