Margaret McKeown

M. Margaret McKeown was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Clinton in 1998. From 1975 to 1998 she was a lawyer with Perkins Cole in Seattle and Washington, DC, where she was the first female partner, served on the firm's executive committee, and founded its Washington office and its intellectual property practice. In 1980-81 McKeown was a White House Fellow serving as Special Assistant to Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus and also Special Assistant at the White House. An internationally-recognized expert in digital and intellectual property law, she has also written, lectured, and taught extensively on intellectual property, international law, human rights law, litigation, ethics, judicial administration, and constitutional law in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. McKeown has served as president of the Federal Judges Association and as chair of the federal Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States, among many other leading professional roles. She currently chairs the Ninth Circuit Workplace Conduct Committee and was appointed to the national Workplace Conduct Working Group by Chief Justice Robert. She also chairs the ABA Commission on the 19th Amendment, and serves as special advisor (former chair) of the ABA Rule of Law Initiative, working with judges and lawyers around the world. She is an adjunct professor and Jurist-in-Residence at the University of San Diego School of Law.