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Bar News - September 20, 2002 Newest Circuit Judge Traces His Background on Way to the Bench Jeffrey Howard's Public Swearing in Set for Sept. 20 A FORMAL CEREMONY inducting the newest member of the US First Circuit Court of Appeals, Jeffrey R. Howard, is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 20 at 3 p.m. at the Warren B. Rudman US Courthouse in Concord. All members of the Bar and the public are invited to attend. Judge Howard has already been on the job since the beginning of the summer, having taken the oath of office in a private ceremony in May. The following is an account of an interview with Howard written by Barbara Rabinovitz, public information officer for the US First Circuit Court of Appeals published in the court's newsletter, The Short Circuit, and reprinted here with permission. * * * When word came from Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 23 that the U.S. Senate had approved his nomination to a seat on the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, the soon-to-be Judge Jeffrey R. Howard received the news at a baseball field. "I was at [my son's] Little League practice," Howard said to a reporter in an April 24 story in the Union Leader. The comment was telling, given the unassuming nature of the court's newest member and his reputation for fair play. In fact, in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early April, Howard, 46, said his professional background is "one that shows I can be fair, that I have been balanced, and that I will continue to be so." His background in the law can be traced to a summer job Howard held during his years as a student at Plymouth State College in his native New Hampshire. The son of a police officer, the young Howard spent those summers following in his father's footsteps, working as a special police officer near his hometown of Cornish. The town can claim several other federal judges among its one-time inhabitants, having formerly been the place of residence for Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1864-1873, and for 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges (and cousins) Learned Hand and Augustus Hand, who were on that bench from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s. Howard's experience as a police officer "exposed me to the world of criminal law," he remarked in a recent interview in his chambers in the Warren B. Rudman US Courthouse in Concord. "I met judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys. . . . And that is what piqued my interest in the law." After graduating from Plymouth State, Howard headed for Washington and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. His career in public service began in 1981, in the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General where he served as an attorney and then deputy AG until 1989. Building on that prosecutorial experience, he accepted an appointment as US Attorney for New Hampshire that year. Four years later, in 1993, he was back at the Attorney General's office, this time as its chief. Although he has never been a judge, Howard believes that, as a former state attorney general and US Attorney, he has the qualifications - in his words, "a wealth of appellate trial and public policy decision-making experience" - the Senate was looking for in a federal appeals court judge. Indeed, his nomination, announced last August, advanced to confirmation, and final appointment by President Bush on May 3, with surprising speed given the much-criticized pace at which the Senate and its Judiciary Committee, in particular, are progressing in their review of Bush's judicial nominees. New Hampshire's two Republican senators, Robert Smith and Judd Gregg, were early and enthusiastic backers of Howard. But his judicial nomination also found support among several key senators in the Democratic Party. Notable among them was Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a close ally of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. The Union Leader, in a May 12 column on Howard's confirmation, took note of the fact that Hampton attorney Jack Sanders managed the 1960 presidential primary campaign of Kennedy's late brother, John F. Kennedy, and that Sanders "maintains close ties to the Kennedy family." Still another Democratic senator and Howard booster was Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, who, as a presidential candidate in 1988, got to know New Hampshire Supreme Court Associate Justice John Broderick. Former New Hampshire Gov. Stephen Merrill, under whom Howard served as state Attorney General, contacted Broderick, his former law partner and, according to the Union Leader, "asked him to enlist Biden's support for Howard." And so it was with a unanimous vote by the full Senate that Howard got the nod to succeed fellow New Hampshire native and Court of Appeals Judge Norman H. Stahl, who assumed senior status in April 2001. Preparing for his first sitting on the court during the week of June 10, Howard was reading through stacks of briefs piled on his wide wooden desk in the Rudman courthouse when he met with The Short Circuit in late May. "As one might expect, there is an enormous volume of reading, but so far I have found the parties' briefs to be extraordinarily enlightening and helpful," he said, adding, "Many of the issues are not foreign to me." What was more "daunting and awe-inspiring," he said of his judicial post, was the prospect of being a member of a court that "quite frankly, is comprised of legends in the law. ... Even though it is the court with the fewest members, it is a court that is very well regarded throughout the nation, often cited and rarely reversed." On May 7, Howard took the oath of office in a cabin in Salisbury, NH, that was the birthplace of Daniel Webster. Howard, with his wife and two young sons, is a resident of Salisbury. A public investiture, in the form of a session of the court, has been scheduled for Sept. 20 at the Rudman Courthouse.
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