Patricia McGowan Wald

Appointment

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Title: Judge
Appointed by: Jimmy CarterDemocratic president
Seat: CADC1101
Nominated: April 30, 1979
Committee hearing: June 18, 1979
Committee action: Reported (favorably)July 17, 1979
Senate vote: 77–21Roll Call
Confirmed: July 24, 1979
Commissioned: July 26, 1979
ABA rating: Well Qualified
Chief Judge from: Jan. 1, 1986until Jan. 1, 1991
Service ended: Nov. 16, 1999Retirement

Source Federal Judicial Center, Biographical Directory of Article III Judges. Party shown is the party of the appointing president, which is a fact about the president, not about the judge.

Recent judicial activity

Opinions authored and panels sat on, most recent first.

No recorded activity.

Cases

Appellate cases on which this judge sat, drawn from panel information published with each decision.

No panel assignments recorded in the ingested window.

Judicial writings

No writings are attributed to this judge in the ingested records.

Source Authorship is recorded only where the source data carries it. For recent Courts of Appeals opinions CourtListener frequently publishes the decision as a single document without naming the authoring judge, so an absence here means the attribution is unavailable upstream — not that the judge has written nothing.

Education

B.A.: Connecticut College for Women (now Connecticut College)1948
LL.B.: Yale Law School1951

Professional career

Law clerk, Hon. Jerome Frank, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1951-1952
Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1952-1953
Research and editorial assistant, Frederick M. Rowe, Esq., 1959-1962
Member, National Conference on Bail and Criminal Justice, 1963-1964
Consultant, National Conference on Law & Poverty, Office of Economic Opportunity, 1965
Member, President's Commission on Crime in the District of Columbia, 1965-1966
Consultant, President's Commission on Law Enforcement & Administration of Criminal Justice, 1966-1967
Attorney, Office of Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 1967-1968
Attorney, Neighborhood Legal Services Program, Washington, D.C., 1968-1970
Consultant, National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorder, 1968
Consultant, National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1969
Co-director, Ford Foundation Drug Abuse Research Project, 1970
Attorney, Center for Law and Social Policy, Washington, D.C., 1971-1972
Director, Office of Policy and Issues, Sargent Shriver Vice-Presidential Campaign, 1972
Attorney, Mental Health Law Project, Washington, D.C., 1972-1977
Assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, 1977-1979
Member, Judicial Conference of the United States, 1986-1990
Member, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 1999-2001

Source Federal Judicial Center biographical record.