Shira A. Scheindlin (born 1946, in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

) is a United States District Court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

 judge for the Southern District of New York. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 on July 28, 1994, to a seat vacated by Louis J. Freeh (who went on the be the director of the FBI), confirmed by the United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 on September 28, 1994, and commissioned on September 29, 1994.

Scheindlin is known for her intellectual acumen, demanding courtroom demeanor, aggressive interpretations of the law, expertise in mass torts, electronic discovery

Electronic Discovery

Electronic discovery refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information in electronic format . Usually a digital forensics analysis is performed to recover evidence...

, and complex litigation.

Education

Scheindlin received her Bachelor's Degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in Far Eastern Studies from University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 (1967), her Master's Degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in History from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 (1969), and her J.D.

Juris Doctor

Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 from Cornell Law School

Cornell Law School

Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...

 (1975).

Pre-judicial career

Before taking her current seat on the Southern District, Scheindlin worked as a prosecutor, commercial lawyer, and judge. She was a clerk for federal judge Charles L. Brieant

Charles L. Brieant

Charles LaMonte Brieant, Jr. was a United States federal judge.-Early life, education, and career:Born 1923 in Ossining, New York, Brieant was in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, from 1943 to 1946, and then received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1947, and an LL.B. from...

, and from 1977 to 1981 was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. From 1981 to 1982, she was General Counsel for the New York City Department of Investigation. Starting in 1982, and continuing through 1984, she served as special master

Special master

In law, a special master is an authority appointed by a judge to make sure that judicial orders are actually followed.In England, at common law, there were "Masters in Chancery," who acted in aid of the Equity Courts. There were also "Masters in Lunacy," who conducted inquiries of the same nature...

 in the Agent Orange

Agent Orange

Agent Orange is the code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth...

 mass tort litigation. From 1992 to 1994, she was special master for another mass torts case involving property damaged by asbestos

Asbestos

Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...

.

As a commercial lawyer, Scheindlin worked for Stroock & Stroock & Lavan

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP is an American law firm based in New York City with approximately 350 lawyers in three offices, the other two being Miami and Los Angeles...

 (1975–76), Budd, Larner, Gross, Rosenbaum, Greenberg & Sade (1986–90), and Herzfeld & Rubin, P.C. (1990–94).

Important cases

During her tenure, Scheindlin has presided over a number of high profile cases, many of which advanced important new positions in the interpretation of the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

 or federal law

Federal law

Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join together in a federation, surrendering their individual sovereignty and many powers to the central government while...

.

• In April 2002, in the case United States v. Osama Awadallah, after Awadallah testified before a grand jury
  Grand jury
  A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
  
   that he had met with two of the September 11, 2001 hijackers, but could not remember their names, Scheindlin dismissed a perjury charge against him and found that Awadallah's prolonged detention without actual criminal charges was based on misrepresentations and omissions by the government and could not be justified under existing law. Her decision was later reversed on appeal.
• In February 2004 in the case Maurice Clarett v. National Football League, Scheindlin, accepting the antitrust-law arguments raised by lawyer Alan C. Milstein, ruled that the NFL could not bar Clarett from participating in the 2004 NFL Draft
  2004 NFL Draft
  The 2004 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 24-25, 2004 at the theater at Madison Square Garden...
  
  . This decision was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
  United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
  The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
  
  , and the case was not heard by the Supreme Court
  Supreme Court of the United States
  The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
  
  .
• In April 2004, in the case Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, Scheindlin sanctioned UBS for not being able to complete their E-Discovery of potentially informative documents, and not complying with their litigation hold on the destruction of documents. This case has been seen as revolutionary in the legal realms of human resources
  Human resources
  Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
  
   and computer forensics
  Computer forensics
  Computer forensics is a branch of digital forensic science pertaining to legal evidence found in computers and digital storage media...
  
  , as the burden of proof was effectively shifted to the defendant for their inability to produce documents in a timely manner, and the presentation to the jury of an adverse inference
  Adverse inference
  Adverse inference is a legal inference, adverse to the concerned party, drawn from silence or absence of requested evidence. It is part of evidence codes based on common law in various countries....
  
  .
• Judge Scheindlin presided over three trials of John Gotti Jr. ("Junior")
  Junior Gotti
  John Angelo Gotti III or "Junior" Gotti is a former New York City mobster who in the 1990s, according to law enforcement claims, led the Gambino crime family of Cosa Nostra for his imprisoned father John J. Gotti, who died in 2002. Between 2004 and 2009 Gotti has been a defendant in four...
  
  , each of which ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury. The principal charge against Gotti in the trials was racketeering conspiracy
  Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
  The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization...
  
   stemming from Gotti's alleged management of the Gambino crime family following the incarceration and death of his father, John Gotti Sr.
  John Gotti
  John Joseph Gotti, Jr was an American mobster who became the Boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. Gotti grew up in poverty. He and his brothers turned to a life of crime at an early age...
  
   (the "Dapper Don"). "On September 20, 2005, the jury acquitted him of securities fraud and hung 11-1 for conviction on racketeering charges that included the assault on Sliwa. His re-trial on the remaining charges the following March also ended in a mistrial, with the jury hung 8-4 for acquittal. At the third trial involving the Sliwa assault, prosecutors convinced 12 jurors that Junior had ordered the kidnapping but failed to convince them that he had engaged in criminal activity after 1999 and the jury again deadlocked on the racketeering charges, this time voting 8-4 for conviction."
• In September 2006 Scheindlin ruled that Judith Clark, a Weather Underground radical serving 75 years to life for the murder of a Brinks guard and two police officers during a robbery, was entitled to a new trial because her Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated. Scheindlin found Clark's right to counsel was violated even though the then-self-proclaimed revolutionary insisted on representing herself at trial, turned down legal counsel, boycotted much of the trial and refused to recognize the court's authority. In January 2008 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed Scheindlin's ruling and held that Clark was not denied her right to counsel because Clark "knowingly and intelligently exercised her constitutional right to make those choices."
• In January 2009, Judge Scheindlin ruled in SEC v Collins & Aikman, a case which addresses discovery
  Electronic Discovery
  Electronic discovery refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information in electronic format . Usually a digital forensics analysis is performed to recover evidence...
  
   obligations of the Government in civil litigation. The case opines that the government was obliged to search its own electronic data to produce responsive documents (versus providing a 10-million page data dump), submit materials allegedly covered by the deliberative process privilege to the Court for in camera
  In camera
  In camera is a legal term meaning "in private". It is also sometimes termed in chambers or in curia.In camera describes court cases that the public and press are not admitted to...
  
   review, and search its e-mail and attachments after cooperating with the plaintiff in the negotiation of an appropriate search protocol “designed to retrieve responsive information without incurring an unduly burdensome expense disproportionate to the size and needs of the case.” Notably, Judge Scheindlin finds in this case that the burden rests with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to provide to the defendant the compilation of documents that support the allegations in the Complaint, rather than passing the burden to the defendant to come up with “appropriate” search terms, especially since “the inaccuracy of such searches is by now relatively well known.” (In Footnote 39, she references TREC Legal Track and other studies that research and report on different search methodologies.) She concluded in this case that a government agency is subject to the “same discovery rules that govern private parties (albeit with the benefit of additional privileges such as deliberative process and state secrets)” thus ordering the SEC to produce documents as requested by the plaintiff.
• In 2011 Judge Scheindlin presided over the trial of accused (and convicted) arms trafficker Viktor Bout
  Viktor Bout
  Viktor Anatolyevich Bout is a convicted arms smuggler. A citizen of Russia, he was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and was extradited in 2010 to the United States to stand trial on terrorism charges after being accused of smuggling arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to use against...
  
  .

Awards

Distinguished Jurist Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (2008)

William Nelson Cromwell Award for unselfish service to the profession and the community from the New York County Lawyers Association (2007)

Edward Weinfeld Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Administration of Justice, New York County Lawyers (2005)

William J. Brennan Award, Criminal Law Section, New York State Bar Association (2003)

Robert L. Haig Award for distinguished public service, Commercial & Federal Litigation Section, New York State Bar Association (2001)

Special Achievement Award in appreciation and recognition of Sustained Superior Performance of Duty, U.S. Department of Justice (1980)

Publications

The Future of Litigation, N.Y.L.J., February 5, 2010

One Day in September (A Celebration of the Bill of Rights), N.Y.L.J., September 25, 2006 (with Brian Lehman, Esq.).

E-Discovery: The Newly Amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Moore's Federal Practice, 2006.

Electronic Discovery Sanctions in the Twenty-First Century, 11 Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review 71 (Fall 2004) (with Kanchana Wangkeo, Esq.).

With All Due Deference: Judicial Responsibility in a Time of Crisis, 32 Hofstra L. Rev. 795 (Spring 2004) (with Matthew L. Schwartz, Esq.).

Mastering Rule 53: The Evolution and Impact of the New Federal Rule Governing Special Masters, 51 Federal Lawyer 34 (Feb. 2004) (with Jonathan M. Redgrave, Esq.).

Revisions in Federal Rule 53 Provide New Options for Using Special Masters in Litigation, 76 Journal of the N.Y. State Bar Association 18 (Jan. 2004) (with Jonathan M. Redgrave, Esq.).

Judge Jack V. Weinstein, Tort Litigation, and the Public Good: A Roundtable Discussion to Honor One of America's Great Trial Judges on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, 12 J.L. & Pol'y 149 (2003) (panel).

Outside Counsel: Retaining, Destroying and Producing E-Data: Part 2, N.Y.L.J., May 9, 2002 (with Jeffrey Rabkin, Esq.).

Electronic Discovery in Federal Civil Litigation: Is Rule 34 Up to the Task?, 41 B.C.L. Rev. 327 (2000) (with Jeffrey Rabkin, Esq.).

Secrecy and the Courts: The Judges' Perspective, 9 J.L. & Pol=y 169 (2000) (panel).

Foreword, A Corporate Counsel=s Guide to Discovery in the Information Age, Washington Legal Foundation (2000).

Judges, Juries, and Sexual Harassment, 17 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 813 (1999) (with John Elofson, Esq.).

A Year in the Life: Reflections of a New District Judge, N.Y.L.J., Nov. 20, 1995.

The ADR Landscape, 496 PLI/Lit 437 (1994) (with David Ross, Esq.).

Legal/Business Advice Dichotomy, N.Y. L.J., Aug. 5, 1993.

Guide to the Southern District of New York Civil Justice Expense and Delay Reduction Plan, 481 PLI/Lit 729 (1993).

A Portrait of a Lady: The Woman Lawyer in the 1980s, 35 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 391 (1990) (with Prof. Stacy Caplow).

Discovering the Discoverable: A Bird's Eye View of Discovery in a Complex Multidistrict Class Action Litigation, 52 Brooklyn L. Rev. 397 (1986).

Venue in the Second Circuit, 43 Brooklyn L. Rev. 841 (1977) (with Hon. Charles L. Briaent, Jr.).

Legal Services: Past and Present, 59 Cornell L. Rev. 960 (1974).

External links