Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann

Robert A. Katzmann is the Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He became Chief Judge on September 1, 2013. At his appointment in 1999, he was Walsh Professor of Government, Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University; a Fellow of the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution; and president of the Governance Institute.

A lawyer and political scientist by training, Judge Katzmann received his A.B. (summa cum laude) from Columbia College, A.M. and Ph.D in government from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Article and Book Review Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, he joined the Brookings Institution, where he was a research associate, senior fellow, visiting fellow, and acting program director. His books include: Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Policy; Institutional Disability; Courts and Congress; editor and project director of The Law Firm and the Public Good; co-editor of Managing Appeals in Federal Court; editor and contributing author of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life; and editor and contributing author of Judges and Legislators.

He currently chairs the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on the Judicial Branch

Judge Katzmann received the American Political Science Association's Charles E. Merriam Award. He is also the recipient of: the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence of the Federal Bar Council; the Chesterfield Smith Award of the Pro Bono Institute; the Stanley H. Fuld Award of the New York State Bar Association; the Michael Maggio Memorial Pro Bono Award of the American Immigration Lawyers Association; the Public Interest Scholarship Organization Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Green Bag's "Exemplary Legal Writing" honoree recognition. His lectures include: the James Madison Lecture of New York University School of Law; the Orison Marden Lecture of the NYC Bar Association; and the Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture of Fordham University School of Law. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.