News Archive
Hon. Patricia McGowan Wald to Speak at IU McKinney School of Law Commencement
05/10/2012
The Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law was honored to have legal pioneer Hon. Patricia McGowan Wald as commencement speaker on Saturday, May 12, 2012. The law school ceremony also featured Dean Gary R. Roberts, IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz, and speakers elected by the student body: Bianca Buechner (LL.M. Division), Alfred Degrafinreid II (Full-time J.D. Division), and Marti Showers (Part-time J.D. Division).
Judge Wald served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for twenty years, from 1979-1999, including five years as Chief Judge. She was a member of the American Bar Association’s Central and Eastern Europe Law Initiative Executive Committee from 1993-99, working on constitutional and judicial reform in that region’s emerging democracies. In 1999, she was appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she sat on the first ICTY Srebrenica genocide trial. Since 2002, she has been a member of the governing body of the OSI Justice Initiative, a member of the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, an advisor to the American Law Institute’s Sentencing Project and a Co-chair of the Advisory Board to DLA-Piper’s New Perimeter Project.
She is also a member of the Advisory Committee to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, and a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States. Additionally, she serves on the American Constitution Society’s Security and Justice Initiative Task Force. A graduate of Yale Law School, Judge Wald also previously served as an attorney with the Mental Health Law Project, an attorney with the Center for Law and Social Policy, co-director of the Ford Foundation Drug Abuse Research Project, an attorney with the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and as the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs in the Carter Administration’s Justice Department. Judge Wald was the first woman on the D.C. Circuit bench and the first woman to head Legislative Affairs in the U.S. Department of Justice. She was the recipient of the American Bar Association’s Medal of Honor in 2008.
