Name Irma Raker Role Judge | Education American University | |
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2007 margaret brent award honoree hon irma s raker
Irma S. Raker (born 1938) is an American lawyer and jurist from Rockville, Maryland. Judge Raker has served as a judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, that state's highest court, since 1994. She retired from that Court in 2008 and currently sits by designation.
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She was born Irma Steinberg in Brooklyn, New York, and attended local schools including Midwood High School. She graduated from Syracuse University in 1959 and studied at the Hague Academy of International Law.
Steinberg interrupted her education to marry Samuel K. Raker and oversee the early development of their three children. She then returned to her studies, earning a J.D. degree from the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1972. She was admitted to the Maryland bar the next year.
Raker served as an Assistant State's Attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland from 1973 to 1979. Judge Raker took the bench when she was appointed a trial judge in Maryland's District Court of Maryland and then the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. She served in a number of increasingly responsible judicial positions until Governor Schaefer appointed her to the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.
Judge Raker currently serves as the Chairperson of the Maryland Access to Justice Commission. She is actively engaged in private mediation and arbitration.