M. Margaret McKeown
Mary Margaret McKeown (born May 11, 1951) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and is based in San Diego, California. McKeown has served on the Ninth Circuit since her confirmation in 1998.
McKeown had been mentioned by some as a possible future United States Supreme Court nominee.
Contents
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Legal career
- 3 Federal judicial service
- 3.1 Statistics
- 3.2 Notable cases
- 4 Legal reform work
- 5 See also
- 6 References
- 7 External links
Early life and education
McKeown, a native of Casper, Wyoming, graduated from Kelly Walsh High School in Casper in 1969. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wyoming in 1972, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and her Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center in 1975. She has also received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Georgetown and studied at the University of Madrid. McKeown is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington Law School and at the University of San Diego School of Law. She is best known in academia for her work in intellectual property law.
Legal career
McKeown was the first female partner with the law firm of Perkins Coie in Seattle, Washington, and Washington, D.C., representing clients like Boeing, Nintendo and Citicorp during her time at the firm, from 1975 until 1998.
McKeown also served in the White House as a White House fellow under President Jimmy Carter, working as a special *istant to the United States Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus from 1980 until 1981.
Federal judicial service
On March 29, 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated McKeown for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then renominated by Clinton on January 7, 1997. McKeown was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 27, 1998, by a vote of 80-11. She received her commission on April 8, 1998. She is currently duty stationed in San Diego, California. McKeown is on the Board of the Federal Judges *ociation.
Statistics
Between December 2014 and August 2020, McKeown sat on an en banc panel 29 times. McKeown was in the majority in all 29 of the en banc cases she heard during that time period.
Notable cases
On September 6, 2007, McKeown penned a judgment for a three-judge panel which affirmed a lower court ruling that banned display of a white metal Latin cross in the Mojave National Preserve in southern California. She ruled that it was a violation of the Cons*ution's Establishment Clause, which bars the government from favoring any one religion. The United States Supreme Court reversed this decision by a vote of 5-4 and remanded the case.
On August 23, 2019, McKeown was one of three judges to rule that a prisoner with gender dysphoria had a right to sex re*ignment surgery under the 8th Amendment.
On March 9, 2020, McKeown delivered the 9th Circuit's en banc majority decision in Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin. Michael Skidmore, representing the trust of rock band Spirit's late lead singer Randy Craig "Randy California" Wolfe, sued rock band Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement. In 1968, Spirit released an instrumental song, "Taurus", whose opening guitar chords bear a strong resemblance to Led Zeppelin's 1971 worldwide hit "Stairway to Heaven". McKeown's decision affirmed a lower court's dismissal of Skidmore's claim that the similarity is not legally actionable.
Legal reform work
McKeown was elected to the American Law Ins*ute in 1993 and was elected to the ALI Council in 2009. She serves as an Adviser on several ALI projects: the Restatement Fourth, Foreign Relations Law of the United States-Treaties; the Restatement Third, The U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration project; and the International Intellectual Property project.
See also
- Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates
References
External links
- Bar *ociation profile of Judge McKeown
- Faculty page for the University of San Diego Law School
- M. Margaret McKeown at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
- Appearances on C-SPAN