Frederic N Smalkin

Childhood and education

Judge Smalkin was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Richard, had risen to become a prominent attorney in Baltimore County, serving as President of the local Bar Association and as one of the first Judges of the People's Court for Baltimore County, before his death in 1958.

The younger Smalkin graduated from McDonogh School and received a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University, Phi Beta Kappa. Following in his late father's footsteps, he graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law, earning his J.D. and was made a member of the Order of the Coif, having graduated first of his class.

Military service

Judge Smalkin put himself through college and law school with a set of Army ROTC scholarships. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army (Regular Army) from 1968 until his honorable discharge, in 1976, earning the Meritorious Service Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster and achieving the rank of Captain. Judge Smalkin served in the Ordnance Corps with a detail to the Judge Advocate General's Corps, first in the Office of the Judge Advocate General and later as Assistant to the General Counsel of the Army, when he was appointed Recorder of the Army Contract Adjustment Board. He later became a rated pilot and Lieutenant Colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, and was awarded its Distinguished Service Medal. He was commissioned in the Maryland Military Department and later promoted Brigadier General and appointed by the Governor as commander of the Maryland Defense Force (State Guard). Upon relinquishing command of the Defense Force, he was awarded the State of Maryland Distinguished Service Cross.

Professional career

Judge Smalkin began his career in public service as Law clerk to then-Chief Judge Edward S. Northrop, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He was subsequently admitted to the Maryland Bar, having reportedly achieved that year's highest score on the Maryland bar exam.

Before entering senior status, on January 8, 2003, Judge Smalkin served as Chief Judge, from October 20, 2001 to January 6, 2003. He had been on the bench since 1976, having begun his career as a United States Magistrate Judge at the early age of 30 years. He received a "promotion," of sorts, on December 1, 1986, when he was invested as a United States District Judge. He retired to senior status in 2003 and retired fully on September 1, 2011. He is now a mediator and arbitrator with the dispute resolution firm JAMS (alternative dispute resolution).

Notable cases

Two controversial cases stand out from the many that Judge Smalkin heard during his thirty years on the bench. First was his 1987 decision which overturned the conviction of Marvin Mandel, who succeeded Spiro Agnew as Governor of Maryland, for mail fraud and racketeering. Smalkin applied a Supreme Court decision—handed down after Mandel's conviction—which held that the mail fraud statute under which Mandel was convicted did not apply to cases of government corruption. United States v. Mandel, 672 F.Supp. 864 (D.Md. 1987).

The second, and perhaps more notorious, case was Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. v. Glendening, in which Judge Smalkin held that the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles could not deny the local Sons of Confederate Veterans a "vanity" license plate bearing a confederate flag, because to do so would infringe their right to free speech, in violation of the First Amendment. Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Glendening, 954 F.Supp. 1099 (D.Md. 1997). In a later case (in 2015), the Supreme Court decided that the purchasers of license plates cannot assert free speech rights with regard to their content.

Academic and professional associations