Newman, Jon O.
NEWMAN, JON O.
NEWMAN, JON O. (1932– ), U.S. Court of Appeals judge. Born in New York City, Newman graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1953 and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1956. He was admitted to the bar in Connecticut and in the District of Columbia in 1957, and he served as senior law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1957 and 1958. Newman was partner in the law firm of Ritter, Satter and Newman in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1958 to 1960.
In 1959 Newman served as counsel to the majority in the Connecticut General Assembly, then from 1959 to 1961 he was special counsel to the governor of Connecticut. In 1961 and 1962 Newman served as executive assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Abraham Ribicoff. From 1963 to 1964 he was administrative assistant to Ribicoff when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Connecticut. Following that, he served as a U.S. attorney in Connecticut until 1969, when he entered private practice.
In 1972 Newman was appointed a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Connecticut. He served as circuit judge until 1993, then as chief judge until 1997, when he became a senior judge. He made significant contributions to copyright law, issues of federal jurisdiction, and the application of international law by U.S. courts. Within the judiciary, Newman served as a member of the U.S. Judicial Conference, as chairman of its Committee on Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and as a member of committees on Appellate Judge Education, Codes of Conduct, and Cameras in the Courtroom.
Newman was a member of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the American Law Institute, serving as an adviser for its Restatement of the Law of Unfair Competition. He was a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of its Action Commission on Tort Liability, and he is a fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation. Judge Newman lectured at the University of Connecticut Law School, and he served as chair of the Board of Regents of the University of Hartford. The author of many articles for law reviews, he has also coauthored a high-school textbook, Politics: The American Way.
[Dorothy Bauhoff (2nd ed.)]