THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
PRESIDENT NAMES FOUR FEDERAL JUDGES
The President today nominated four individuals to serve on the federal bench. To the U.S. Court of Appeals, he nominated Guido Calabresi for the Second Circuit and Robert H. Henry for the Tenth Circuit. President Clinton also named Frank M. Hull to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, and W. Louis Sands to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.
"I am proud to nominate these distinguished individuals to serve in our federal judiciary," the President said today. "Their commitment to public service and equal justice for all Americans is outstanding."
With these four candidates, the President has nominated 62 men and women to the federal bench. By comparison, President Bush had nominated 35 judges at the same point in his administration; for Presidents Reagan and Carter, the totals were 50 and 35 judges, respectively.
Biographies of the two appellate court nominees are attached. The District Court nominees are as follows:
Frank M. Hull has served as a Superior Court Judge since 1990, following six years as a State Court trial judge. Hull has also spent ten years in private law practice; she began her career as a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Hull, 45, graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College and Emory University School of Law. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Antonin Aeck, and their two children.
W. Louis Sands has been a Superior Court Judge since 1991. He served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Macon Judicial District from 1975 to 1978, then became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. Later, Sands practiced law with the firm Mathis, Sands, Jordan & Adams. A graduate of Mercer University and the Walter F. George School of Law, Sands, 44, is married to Karla Jonita Heath-Sands and has three children. Sands would become the first African- American to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, based in Macon.
GUIDO CALABRESI
Nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit
Guido Calabresi, an award-winning author and renowned legal scholar, is Dean of Yale Law School. The National Law Journal recently cited Calabresi as the preeminent thinker in his field, and called one of his books "the foundation of the modern revolution in torts law." His academic writing, engaging teaching style and quick wit have won him acclaim from lawyers, law professors and judges.
Calabresi was born in Milan, Italy in 1932; at age six, he and his parents fled the fascist country to the United States. His father, a cardiologist, became a clinical professor at Yale University and his mother, a philosopher and literature scholar, became the chair of the Italian department at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven. Calabresi, who spoke only three words of English when he immigrated, entered Yale College as a freshman in 1949.
In 1953, he graduated number one in his Yale class, summa cum laude, with a degree in analytical economics. Calabresi won a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he studied politics, philosophy and economics from 1953 to 1955. He graduated with highest honors.
In 1958, Calabresi graduated first in his class from Yale Law School, where he was Order of the Coif and Note Editor of the Law Journal. He won prizes for the highest scholarship each year he was at the law school. Calabresi clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black before returning to New Haven in 1959 to teach law at Yale. By 1962, at age 29, Calabresi became a full professor, the youngest in the history of Yale Law School. He was named Dean in 1985.
In his quarter-century as a professor and scholar at Yale, Calabresi has written over 75 legal articles, lectured throughout the world and has been awarded 20 honorary degrees. He has taught as a visiting professor at law schools in Florence, Italy; Cambridge, England; Kyoto, Japan; and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Calabresi's 1970 book, The Costs of Accidents: A Legal and Economic Analysis, is considered a foundation of the modern revolution in torts law. The Yale professor also has published three other books, including Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes and the Law, which analyzed how gender and ethnic differences color perceptions of legal issues. The work earned him the American Bar Association's prestigious Silver Gavel Award in 1986.
In 1985, Calabresi was awarded Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, the highest-honor bestowed on American Catholics. President Reagan appointed him to the U.S. Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution. In New Haven, Calabresi has been director of the Friends of Legal Services for South Central Connecticut and has worked as a volunteer at the Thomas More Soup Kitchen and Jewish Fund for Justice.
Calabresi is married to the former Anne Gordon Audubon Tyler; the couple wed in 1961. They have three grown children: a journalist, a medical doctor and a student working toward a Ph.D.
If confirmed, Calabresi will become one of thirteen judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which hears cases from New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
ROBERT H. HENRY
Nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Tenth Circuit
Robert Harlan Henry, a former state representative and Attorney General of Oklahoma, is a law professor and Dean of the School of Law at the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. Henry possesses one of the state's sharpest legal minds and was a strong public and consumer advocate as an elected official.
Henry was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1953 and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in Norman with high honors in 1974. He earned his law degree in late 1976 from the university's School of Law.
At age 23, a month before his law school graduation, Henry defeated five other candidates in a election for a seat in the state legislature. At the same time, he also began work part-time as an associate in his uncle's law firm, Henry, West, Still & Combs.
Henry rose quickly in the state house. By his second term, he was named vice-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. By his third term, he was chairman. By 1982, when he named was chairman of a powerful appropriations subcommittee, Henry was in a position to oversee all legislation affecting the judicial system in Oklahoma. Perhaps his greatest achievement in the state legislature was a bill he authored on Oklahoma's Pleading Code. A former state chief justice said Henry's bill was "an act that brought Oklahoma into the 20th century," in legal practice.
Henry left the legislature in 1986, when he was elected the state's Attorney General. As the state's chief legal official, Henry not only supervised thousands of cases, but he also helped create a new state ethics commission and revamped the state's antiquated grand jury system. He established a medicaid fraud unit and chaired a committee that studied revisions to the state's complicated constitution.
Henry also prosecuted the first white collar case in modern Oklahoma history, indicting a state college president for allegedly converting public funds for private use. As Attorney General, he also often used his position to fight consumer fraud. For example, in 1990 he prevented the Arkansas-Oklahoma Gas Corporation from increasing rates without required public notice. Near the end of his term, Henry was named chairman of a national committee of Attorneys General that focused on rural legal affairs.
Henry became Dean of the School of Law at Oklahoma University in 1991. In addition to his teaching and administrative duties, Henry has done pro bono work for the Oklahoma County Public Defender's office and several non-profit groups. He also has lectured extensively on ethics and state sunshine laws.
Henry is married to Dr. Janice Loraine Ralls Henry. He has two young daughters. The family lives in Oklahoma City.
If confirmed, Henry would become one of twelve judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals' 10th Circuit, which hears cases from Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.
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