Edwards was born on November 3, 1940, in New York City, the oldest of three children born to Arline Ross Edwards and George H. Edwards. His parents were divorced in 1950 and Edwards and his two sisters, Verne Debourg and Pamela Matthews, were raised by their mother. From 1952 to 1953, his mother attended Smith College, where she earned a Master's degree in social work.[2] While his mother was away, Edwards lived with his grandparents,[3] in the Harlem section of Manhattan. When his mother returned, the family moved to Long Island, where Edwards attended Uniondale High School and was president of the first graduating class.[4]
During his time in Michigan, Edwards spent time with his father, George H. Edwards, a long-time member of the Michigan House of Representatives;[6][7] his stepmother, Esther Gordy Edwards, a senior vice president at Motown Record Company;[8] and Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Record Company.[9]
Professional career: 1965–1980
Despite his very strong academic record in law school, Edwards had difficulty finding a job in the legal profession because he was black. Every major law firm to which he applied openly rejected him because of his race.[10] It was only after Professor Russell Smith, his mentor at Michigan, interceded on his behalf that he was hired at Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson.[11] He worked with the firm in Chicago from 1965 to 1970, specializing in labor law and collective bargaining.[12]
In 1970, Edwards joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School and became the first African American to teach there.[13] His teaching and scholarship focused on labor law, collective bargaining, labor law in the public sector, employment discrimination, arbitration, negotiations, and higher education and the law. In 1974, he and his then-wife Becky, and their children, Brent and Michelle, traveled to Brussels, Belgium, where Edwards was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Free University of Brussels.[14] In 1975, Edwards accepted an invitation to visit at Harvard Law School. He was a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School during the 1975–76 school year and then accepted a tenured position on the law school faculty in 1976.[14] While at Harvard, Edwards was also a faculty member at the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University from 1976 through 1982.[15] During this period, he co-authored a book on Higher Education and the Law, which was a major shift in his academic work. In the spring of 1977, Edwards and his family returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he rejoined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. In 1980, Edwards was the co-author of four different casebooks (the only legal scholar in the country at the time to achieve the feat).[16]
In 1977, Edwards was nominated by President Carter and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the Board of Directors of Amtrak.[13] He was subsequently elected Chairman by the other members of the Board.[17] He resigned his position with Amtrak when he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. From 1970 until 1980, Edwards served as neutral labor arbitrator on a number of major company and union arbitration panels;[16] he was also Vice President of the National Academy of Arbitrators.[1]
Federal judicial service
When President Carter took office in 1977, among the active federal court of appeals judges, there was only one woman, and only two Black judges.[18] To address this situation, the President established merit selection panels to identify and recommend highly qualified female and minority attorneys for appointment to the federal bench.[19] In 1979, the judicial selection panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sent nine names to then-Attorney General Griffin Bell. From that list, President Carter nominated Patricia Wald,[20]Abner Mikva,[21] and Edwards to serve on the court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg[22] was later nominated when an additional opening arose on the D.C. Circuit. Edwards was nominated by the President on December 6, 1979, to a seat vacated by Judge David L. Bazelon, and confirmed by the United States Senate on February 20, 1980, and he received his judicial commission on February 20, 1980.[23] He was 39 years old when he joined the court, reputedly the youngest federal court of appeals judge sitting at the time.[16]
Edwards served as chief judge from the fall of 1994 until July 2001.[23] During his nearly seven years as chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, Edwards directed numerous IT initiatives at the D.C. Circuit;[24] oversaw a complete reorganization of the Clerk's Office and Legal Division; implemented case management programs that helped to cut the court's case backlog and reduce case disposition times; successfully pursued congressional support for the construction of the William B. Bryant Annex to the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse; presided over the court's hearings in United States v. Microsoft; established programs to enhance communications with the lawyers who practice before the court; and received high praise from members of the bench, bar, and press for fostering collegial relations among the members of the court.[25] He assumed senior status on November 3, 2005.[23]
Law teaching and scholarship since 1980
Since 1980, Edwards has taught at a number of law schools, including Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.[1] He is presently a professor of law at the NYU School of Law, where he has taught since 1990.[1] In 2010, he was the C.V. Starr Distinguished Jurist in Residence at the Peking University School of Transnational Law, Shenzhen, China.[1] He is the coauthor of five books.[1] His most recent[when?] book is Edwards & Elliott, Federal Standards of Review (3d ed. 2018).
One of his most significant publications, "The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession", 91 Mich. L. Rev. 34 (1992), has been the source of extensive comment, discussion, and debate among legal scholars and practitioners. The article has been recognized as "one of the most-cited law review articles of all time."[26] Three other articles, "Collegial Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals" (July 2017);[27] Edwards & Livermore, "The Pitfalls of Empirical Studies That Attempt to Understand the Factors Affecting Appellate Decisionmaking", 58 Duke L.J.1895 (2009); and "The Effects of Collegiality on Judicial Decision Making", 151 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1639 (May 2003), explain how appellate judges decide cases and refute the claim that the personal ideologies and political leanings of court of appeals judges are crucial determinants in their decision-making.
In the 2017 paper,[27] Edwards contends that too often commentators attempt to equate the decision-making practices of the U.S. Courts of Appeals with those of the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a mistake, he says, because the organizational structures and judicial responsibilities of the Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals are strikingly different. And, unlike the Supreme Court, most of the decisions issued by the Courts of Appeals are unanimous. For the terms between 2011 and 2016, the Courts of Appeals issued over 172,000 total decisions on the merits. Only 1.3% of these decisions included a dissent. Less than 1% of the total decisions included a concurring opinion. And 90% of “published” decisions were issued without a dissent. During the same time period: 56% of the decisions issued by the Supreme Court included a dissent; 40% of the signed decisions included a concurring opinion; and only 46% of the Supreme Court’s decisions were unanimous.[27]
In 2004, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Edwards authored "The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity," 102 Mich. L. Rev. 944 (2004), drawing on his own personal and professional experiences to reflect on racial equality and inequality in America over the past 50 years and pondering the consequences of the shift from racial assimilation to diversity as a means of achieving racial equality.[28] In 2017, he amplified some of his thoughts on racial bias in a paper entitled “Reflections on Racial Stigmas and Stereotyping.”[29]
Work with the National Academy of Sciences
In 2006, Edwards was appointed by the United States National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences to serve as co-chair of the Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community.[28] On February 18, 2009, the Committee published a widely hailed study reporting serious deficiencies in the nation's forensic science system and calling for major reforms and new research.[30] The report said that rigorous and mandatory certification programs for forensic scientists were lacking, as were strong standards and protocols for analyzing and reporting on evidence.[31] The report also indicated that there was a dearth of peer-reviewed, published studies establishing the scientific bases and reliability of many forensic methods and that many forensic science labs were underfunded, understaffed, and had no effective oversight.[31] Numerous reform efforts have been initiated in the wake of the report.[32]
Edwards also served on the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law at the National Academy of Sciences from 2013 to 2018.[33] In 2016, he served as co-chair of the Senior Advisors to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which published a “Report to the President – Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods” (2016).[34] From 2009 to 2018, Edwards wrote a number of papers and spoke out regularly in favor of reform in the forensic science community.[35] In April 2019, the Judge received the Innocence Network Champion of Justice Award on behalf of the Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community at the National Academy of Sciences. The award honors those who support efforts to reform the criminal justice system and prevent wrongful convictions.[36]
Professional activities
Justice Elena Kagan (left) and Judge Edwards (right) at the Department of Justice in 2011
Edwards is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Board of Directors, Institute for Judicial Administration, NYU School of Law; and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.[1] In 2004, Edwards received the Robert J. Kutak Award, presented by the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar "to a person who meets the highest standards of professional responsibility and demonstrates substantial achievement toward increased understanding between legal education and the active practice of law."[1] In 2011, Edwards was the recipient of the Inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Michigan Law School.[37] He was selected by William & Mary School of Law to receive their 2015 Marshall-Wythe Medallion, the highest honor conferred by the law faculty, recognizing members of the legal community who have demonstrated exceptional accomplishment in law; the Groat Alumni Award from Cornell University; the Society of American Law Teachers Award (for "Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Public Service"); and he has received a number of honorary degrees.[1]
Personal life
Edwards and his wife, Pamela Carrington-Edwards, were married in 2000. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated their wedding ceremony.[38] He has a son, Brent, who is a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, a daughter, Michelle, and four grandchildren.[16]
Selected works
Books
Edwards, Harry T.; Nordin, Virginia Davis (1979). Higher Education and the Law. Cambridge, MA: Institute for Education Management, Harvard University. ISBN9780934222006.
Harry T. Edwards & Linda A. Elliott, Federal Standards of Review (3d ed. 2018).
— (1983). "The Rising Work Load and Perceived 'Bureaucracy' of the Federal Courts: A Causation-Based Approach to the Search for Appropriate Remedies". Iowa Law Review. 68 (5): 871–936.
— (1985). "Public Misconceptions Concerning the Politics of Judging: Dispelling Some Myths About the D.C. Circuit". University of Colorado Law Review. 56 (4): 619–46.
— (2004). "The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity". Michigan Law Review. 102 (5): 944–78. doi:10.2307/4141986. JSTOR4141986.
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minority groups" did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The decision largely upheld the Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy but held racial quotas to be unconstitutional. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), a separate case decided on the same day as Grutter, the Court struck down a points-based admissions system that awarded an automatic bonus to the admissions scores of minority applicants.
Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6–3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points towards admission to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional.
Lee Carroll Bollinger is an American attorney and educator who served as the 19th president of Columbia University from 2002 to 2023 and as the 12th president of the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2002.
The University of Michigan Law School is the law school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1859, the school offers Master of Laws (LLM), Master of Comparative Law (MCL), Juris Doctor (JD), and Doctor of the Science of Law (SJD) degree programs.
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The Michigan Law Review is an American law review and the flagship law journal of the University of Michigan Law School.
Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, was the first successful legal challenge to a university's affirmative action policy in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Hopwood, four white plaintiffs who had been rejected from University of Texas at Austin's School of Law challenged the institution's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed. After seven years as a precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Hopwood decision was abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.
James Skelly Wright was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and previously was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), or Proposal 2, was a ballot initiative in the U.S. state of Michigan that passed into Michigan Constitutional law by a 58% to 42% margin on November 7, 2006, according to results officially certified by the Michigan Secretary of State. By Michigan law, the Proposal became law on December 22, 2006. MCRI was a citizen initiative aimed at banning consideration of race, color, sex, or religion in admission to colleges, jobs, and other publicly funded institutions – effectively prohibiting some affirmative action by public institutions based on those factors. The Proposal's constitutionality was challenged in federal court, but its constitutionality was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The University of Texas School of Law is the law school of the University of Texas at Austin, a public research university in Austin, Texas. According to Texas Law’s ABA disclosures, 87.20% of the Class of 2022 obtained full-time, long-term bar passage required employment nine months after graduation.
George Edward MacKinnon was an American politician, attorney, and judge who served as a United States representative and United States Attorney for Minnesota, and as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He was the father of feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon.
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Boyce Ficklen Martin Jr. was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, Martin served as chief judge of the circuit from 1996 to 2003 and wrote more than 1,100 opinions during his 34-year tenure. Martin lived in Louisville, Kentucky.
Paul Brest is an American legal scholar who is a former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a former dean of Stanford Law School. He is credited with coining the name originalism to describe a particular approach to interpreting the United States Constitution.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard, known professionally as Nina Pillard, is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge, Pillard was a law professor at Georgetown University.
David Jeremiah Barron is an American lawyer who serves as the Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and former S. William Green Professor of Public Law at Harvard Law School. He previously served as the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice.
Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. 365 (2016), also known as Fisher II, is a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit correctly found that the University of Texas at Austin's undergraduate admissions policy survived strict scrutiny, in accordance with Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), which ruled that strict scrutiny should be applied to determine the constitutionality of the University's race-conscious admissions policy.
↑ Emily Cobb, Arlene (sic) Lyle – A Person for People, The Hudsonian (The Official Student Newspaper for Hudson Valley Community College, N.Y.), Feb. 13, 1974, p.3.
↑ SIGNATURE, 1958 Yearbook for Uniondale High School, Uniondale, Long Island, New York, p. 55.
↑ Harry T. Edwards, The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity, 102 MICH. L. REV. 944, 955 (2004).
↑ State of Michigan, Michigan Legislature, House Concurrent Resolution No. 924 offered as a Memorial for Mr. George H. Edwards, November 12 & 13, 1980; Paul Finkelman, editor, Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present, from the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century (Oxford Univ Press, 2009), Vol. 1, page 140.
↑ Harry T. Edwards, The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity, 102 MICH. L. REV. 944, 955-56 (2004).
1 2 Harry T. Edwards, The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity, 102 MICH. L. REV. 944, 956 (2004).
↑ Harry Edwards Chairs Board of Amtrak, 24 L. Quadrangle Notes 3-4 (Fall, 1979); Harry T. Edwards, The Journey from Brown v. Board of Education to Grutter v. Bollinger: From Racial Assimilation to Diversity, 102 MICH. L. REV. 944, 956 (2004).
↑ William K. Olivier, An Interview with Judge Harry T. Edwards, 49 JUDGES' J. 4 (Summer 2010).
↑ Lily Henning, The Edwards Treatment, Legal Times (Nov. 21, 2005); Personal Profile: J. Groner, Chiefly, Edwards Is A Calming Influence, Legal Times, Week of July 8, 1996, Vol. xix, No. 8, at p.1; Personal Profile: J. Groner, Don't Fence Him In, The American Lawyer, July/August 1996, at p. 39.
↑ Fred R. Shapiro & Michelle Pearse, The Most-Cited Law Review Articles of All Time, 110 MICH. L. REV. 1483, 1492, 1493, 1501 (2012).
1 2 Harry T. Edwards, The National Academy of Sciences Report on Forensic Sciences: What it Means for the Bench and Bar, 51 JURIMETRICS J. 1 (Summer 2010).
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