Preceded by Andre Davis Education Yale University Appointed by Barack Obama | Nationality American Date appointed July 29, 2014 | |
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Similar Barack Obama, Dawn Johnsen, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Eric Holder | ||
Pamela Ann Harris (born 1962) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and former visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a previous Executive Director of its Supreme Court Institute. Harris is married to Austin Schlick, a lawyer with Google and former Federal Communications Commission general counsel.
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Early life and education
Harris graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, in 1985 from Yale College. She received a Juris Doctor in 1990 from Yale Law School. She served as a law clerk to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, from 1990 to 1991. She worked as an associate at the law firm of Shea & Gardner (now Goodwin Procter LLP) in Washington, D.C. from 1991 to 1992. She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court, from 1992 to 1993.
Professional career
Harris served as an attorney-advisor in the United States Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, from 1993 to 1996. From 1996 to 1999, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, earning the Harvey Levin Memorial Teaching Award. She previously served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice. She joined O'Melveny & Myers LLP as counsel in 1999, where she specialized in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, becoming partner in 2005. Beginning in 2007, concurrently with her private practice, she co-directed Harvard Law School's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Clinic and was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center. In 2009, she was named the Executive Director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown, serving in that position until 2010, when she joined the Office of Legal Policy. She returned to Georgetown in 2012 and served in that capacity until her appointment as a federal judge in 2014.
Federal judicial service
On May 8, 2014, President Obama nominated Harris to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Andre M. Davis, who took senior status on February 28, 2014. She received a hearing on her nomination on Tuesday, June 24, 2014. On July 17, 2014 her nomination was reported out of committee by a roll call vote of 10-8
On July 22, 2014, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture on Harris's nomination. On July 24, 2014, the motion to invoke cloture was agreed to by a vote of 54-41.
On July 28, 2014 the United States Senate voted 50-43 in favor of final confirmation. She received her judicial commission the next day.