Jeffrey Sutton

Jeffrey Sutton
Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Incumbent
Assumed office May 1, 2021
Preceded by	R. Guy Cole Jr.
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Incumbent
Assumed office May 5, 2003
Appointed by	George W. Bush
Preceded by	David Aldrich Nelson
2nd Solicitor General of Ohio
In office 1995–1998
Attorney General	Betty Montgomery
Preceded by	Richard Cordray
Succeeded by	Edward B. Foley
Personal details
Born	(1960-10-31) October 31, 1960 (age 60) Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Education	Williams College (BA) Ohio State University Moritz College of Law (JD)

Jeffrey Stuart Sutton (born October 31, 1960 in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) is the Chief United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Early life and career[]

Sutton received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1983. After graduating from college and prior to law school, Sutton taught high school history and was the varsity soccer coach at The Columbus Academy, a private school in Gahanna, Ohio.

He received his Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in 1990. He then clerked for Judge Thomas Meskill of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1990 to 1991 and then on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.. However, since Justice Powell had assumed senior status, Sutton primarily worked under Antonin Scalia from 1991 to 1992, and as a result he was a co-clerk with Daniel P. Collins.

Sutton was in private practice in Columbus from 1992 to 1995 and 1998 to 2003, serving as Solicitor General of Ohio from 1995 to 1998. He has also served as an adjunct professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law^[1] since 1994 and more recently as a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School.^[2] He teaches state constitutional law, a subject in which he is particularly interested and about which he has written extensively.^[3]

Judicial career[]

Sixth Circuit nomination[]

Sutton was first nominated by President George W. Bush on May 9, 2001 to a seat on the Sixth Circuit vacated by David A. Nelson. That nomination, made during the 107th United States Congress, never received a floor vote in the United States Senate. Sutton was not confirmed until almost two years later, on April 29, 2003, when the Senate of the 108th United States Congress voted 52 to 41 in favor of his confirmation to the Sixth Circuit.^[4] He received his commission on May 5, 2003. He became Chief Judge on May 1, 2021.^[5]

Sixth Circuit tenure[]

In 2007, Sutton dissented in part when the Sixth Circuit held that a police officer did not have qualified immunity for arresting a speaker for using foul language at a town meeting.^[6] In June 2011, Sutton became the first judge appointed by a Republican to rule in favor of the health care mandate in President Barack Obama's Health Care law.^[7]

In November 2014, Sutton authored the 2-1 opinion ruling upholding same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee in the Sixth Circuit reversing six previous federal district court rulings. The ruling was the second federal court ruling and the only Federal Court of Appeals ruling^[8] to uphold same-sex marriage bans after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor in June 2013. This ran counter to rulings by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th circuits, which then led the U.S. Supreme Court to grant writ of certiorari to review same-sex marriage bans when it previously declined to do so.^[9][10] In Obergefell v. Hodges the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Sixth Circuit.

Feeder judge[]

Since joining the bench, Judge Sutton has been one of the most prolific feeder judges, sending a number of his law clerks to the Supreme Court.^[11]

Other[]

Sutton chaired the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2009 to 2012, and served on the committee beginning in 2005. He went on to chair the from 2012 to 2015.^[12]

Other views[]

On a podcast with Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, Judge Sutton, a conservative originalist, expressed the view that the United States Supreme Court's December 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore was wrongly decided.^[13]

Published works[]

• 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2018).
• The Certiorari Process and State Court Decisions, 131 Harv. L. Rev. F. 167 (2018) (with Brittany Jones).
• Courts as Change Agents: Do We Want More — Or Less?, 127 Harv. L. Rev. 1419 (2014).
• Barnette, Frankfurter, and Judicial Review, 96 Marq. L. Rev. 133 (2012).
• What Does—and Does Not—Ail State Constitutional Law, 59 U. Kan. L. Rev. 687 (2011).
• State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience (2010) (with Randy J. Holland, Stephen R. McAllister, and Jeffrey M. Shaman).
• A Review of Richard A. Posner How Judges Think (2008), 108 Mich. L. Rev. 859 (2010).
• The Role of History in Judging Disputes About the Meaning of the Constitution, 41 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 1173 (2009).
• Why Teach—And Why Study—State Constitutional Law, 34 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 165 (2009).
• San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez and its Aftermath, 94 Va. L. Rev. 1963 (2008).
• An Appellate Perspective on Federal Sentencing After Booker and Rita, 85 Denv. U. L. Rev. 79 (2007).

See also[]

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References[]

External links[]

• Jeffrey Sutton at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court from the Oyez Project