Keynote Speaker
The Honorable Robert A. Katzmann
Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Robert A. Katzmann Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, assuming that position on September 1, 2014. At his appointment to the federal bench 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, Institutional Disability, Courts and Congress, Judging Statutes (forthcoming) 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 ofJudges and Legislators. In 2007, he delivered the Marden Lecture of the New York City Bar Association, "The Legal Profession and the Unmet Needs of the Immigrant Poor" and later launched the Study Group on Immigrant Representation. He conceived of and sparked the creation of the Immigrant Justice Corps, the country's first fellowship program dedicated to meeting the need for high-quality legal assistance for immigrants. He also convened the Study Group on Immigrant Representation, from which emanated the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, the first government funded program providing counsel for detained non-citizens.
Judge Katzmann has been a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States; a vice-chair of the Committee on Government Organization and Separation of Powers of the ABA Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice; a board member of: the American Judicature Society, NYU's Institute of Judicial Administration; a member of the Board of Visitors of Georgetown University Law Center, and of the board of academic advisors of the Rehnquist Center. He served as co-chair of the FTC transition team for the Clinton/Gore Administration, and as special counsel to Senator Moynihan on the confirmation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He chaired the Section on Legislation of the American Association of Law Schools. He teaches a course on the administrative process at NYU Law School. 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 (2001), "given to a person whose published work and career represents a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research." He is a recipient of the Fuld Award of the New York State Bar Association, the Chesterfield Smith Award of the Pro Bono Institute, the Michael Maggio Award of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the 2012 Learned Hand Medal of the Federal Bar Council. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.