With the coming retirement of Judge Inez Smith Reid, the D.C. Court of Appeals has begun looking for a successor to take her place on the bench.
Reid’s retirement goes into effect on April 2, 2011, and the Judicial Nomination Commission must send the names of three possible nominations to President Barack Obama 60 days before Reid steps down.
In order to be considered for the judgeship, applicants must be active members of the D.C. Bar, have lived in Washington for at least 90 days, and cannot have served on the D.C. Tenure Commission or the JNC for two years prior to being nominated.
Reid was nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals in 1995 by President Bill Clinton. She earned her undergraduate degree from Tufts University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She also has a masters degree from U.C.L.A., a Ph.D. from Columbia University and an LL.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Before being nominated to the bench, Reid served as general counsel for the New York Division for Youth and deputy general counsel for regulation review of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She also served as inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency and as corporation counsel for the District of Columbia, which is now known as D.C. attorney general. In private practice, Smith worked at Graham & James and Lewis, White & Clay, specializing in litigation, environmental law, white-collar crime, and commercial law.
As The National Law Journal reported in March, Reid is the court’s most prolific judge, issuing 85 written opinions in four years. She averaged about 246 days per written opinion, putting her in the middle of the nine active judges on the appeals court.
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