A. David Mazzone - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A. David Mazzone was a lawyer, Massachusetts assistant district
attorney, assistant United States attorney, Massachusetts Superior court judge. He served for twenty-six years as a Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts

United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts

The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA. The first court session was held in Boston in 1789. The second term was held in Salem in 1790 and until 1813 court session locations...

.

"He will forever be remembered by the people of Massachusetts for his landmark rulings that led to the cleanup of Boston Harbor," United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy said to the Boston Globe shortly after Mazzone's death in October 2004.

He was born Armando David Mazzone in Everett, Massachusetts

Everett, Massachusetts

Everett is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, near Boston. The population was 41,667 at the 2010 census.Everett is the last city in the United States with a bicameral legislature, which is composed of a seven-member Board of Aldermen and an 18-member Common Council...

, to immigrant parents. He was a star tight end on the Everett High School

Everett High School (Massachusetts)

Everett High School is a public high school in Everett, Massachusetts. In the 2007-2008 school year, it had 1,774 students. After being at the Broadway Street location for almost 100 years, a new high school was built on Elm Street, opening in September, 2007....

football team, where he won all-scholastic honors, and he later played tight end on the Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

team. After graduating from Harvard in 1950, he became a supervisor at Inland Steel Corp., a steel mill in East Chicago, Indiana. He served in the United States Army for two years during the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

, then returned to the steel mill and enrolled at DePaul University

DePaul University

DePaul University is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul...

Law School. After law school, he opened a small law office in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, but soon returned to Massachusetts, where he spent two years as an Assistant District Attorney of Middlesex County and four years as an Assistant United States Attorney under Arthur W. Garrity Jr. In 1965, Mazzone and three other Assistant U.S. attorneys, resigned to open their own law firm, Moulton, Looney and Mazzone. He remained in private practice until his appointment to the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Governor Michael Dukakis

Michael Dukakis

Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...

in 1974. In 1977, was nominated to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

, and he was sworn in in March, 1978.

In the early 1980s, the Conservation Law Foundation and the City of Quincy, Massachusetts

Quincy, Massachusetts

Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...

sued the regional Metropolitan District Commission, saying that it violated clean water statutes because its antiquated sewage treatment plant on Deer Island was dumping hundreds of tons of black sludge into the harbor daily. The United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

later joined the suit. Judge Mazzone ruled the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority

Massachusetts Water Resources Authority

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is a public authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides wholesale drinking water and sewage services to certain municipalities and industrial users in the state, primarily in the Boston area.The authority receives water from the Quabbin...

(which was the successor to the Municipal District Commission's operations of the Boston regional water and sewage systems), was in "chronic, flagrant violation" of federal law, and ordered it to set deadlines for a cleanup. He oversaw the case himself, rather than appointing a special master as judges often do in long-running cases.

Judge Mazzone was known for his dedication not only to headline-producing cases, but to the routine caseload of a federal court, which he characterized as "doing the nation's work."

"I don't think there are any secrets to being a good judge," Mazzone said in a 1984 interview with the Boston Globe. "You have to work at it. Few of us have the brilliance of a (Judge Charles E.) Wyzanski

Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr.

Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr. was a United States federal judge.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Wyzanski received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1927 and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1930...

or a (Judge) Learned Hand

Learned Hand

Billings Learned Hand was a United States judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...

. What you have is a respect for the law, a knowledge of the principles and a desire to do the best job you can. Good lawyers make good judges. Any lawyer can make a judge look bad. But a good lawyer playing by the rules, playing it straight makes a good case, and the judge is merely incidental, truly an impartial arbiter. A judge should just be there with a knowledge of the law and leave the lawyering to the lawyers."

A memorial to Judge Mazzone on Deer Island

Deer Island (Massachusetts)

Deer Island is a peninsula in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. Since 1996 it is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Although still an island by name, Deer Island has been connected to the mainland since the former Shirley Gut channel, which once separated the island from the...

in Boston Harbor (pictured above), near the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant

Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant

The Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant run and operated by The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is located on Deer Island, one of the Boston Harbor Islands in Boston Harbor. The water treatment plant cost over 3.8 billion dollars making it the seventeenth most expensive object...

was dedicated on October 19, 2007.

External links

Monthly and Quarterly reports, 1998 to present, by the MWRA in compliance with the court case Mazzone presided over.

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See also

External links