The Public's Confidence in the Supreme Court

David F. Levi is the Levi Family Professor of Law and Judicial Studies and director emeritus of the Bolch Judicial Institute. He was the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean of Duke Law School from 2007-2018. Following his tenure as dean, Levi served as the founding director of the Bolch Judicial Institute from 2018 until 2022. He also served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States in 2021.

In 2023, he was appointed to the Data Protection Review Court (DPRC). The DPRC independently reviews determinations made by the Civil Liberties Protection Officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to qualifying complaints sent by individuals through appropriate public authorities that allege certain violations of United States law in the conduct of United States signals intelligence activities.

Before becoming the 14th Dean of Duke School of Law in 2007, Levi was the Chief Judge for the Eastern District of California with chambers in Sacramento. Earlier in his career, he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Levi was then nominated in 1990 to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by President George H.W. Bush. 

After law school, he clerked with Judge Ben C. Duniway of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then with Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 2007, Levi was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2010 to 2014, he served on the Equal Justice Works board of directors. In 2014, he was appointed chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on the American Judicial System, and in 2015, he was named co-chair of the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice. He served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States in 2021.

Levi was elected to The American Law Institute in March 1991, serving as an Adviser on the Federal Judicial Code Revision, Principles of the Law, Aggregate Litigation, and Principles of the Law, Student Sexual Misconduct: Procedural Frameworks for Colleges and Universities projects. He was elected to the Council in October 2005 and became ALI's 10th President in May 2017.

Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr., was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2010. Born in Montreal, Canada, Judge Lohier graduated from Harvard College in 1988 and in 1991 received his J.D. from New York University School of Law where he was Editor in Chief of the Annual Survey of American Law and recipient of the Vanderbilt Medal.

Prior to his judicial appointment, he served as the Chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York, leading investigations and prosecutions of some of the highest-profile offenses on Wall Street including securities fraud, insider trading, ponzi schemes, and commodities fraud. He was deputy chief of the Task Force until 2009 and prior to that served as chief and deputy chief of the office's Narcotics Unit.

Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2000, Judge Lohier spent three years as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. From 1993 to 1997, he was in private practice as an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilon in New York. Judge Lohier was also a clerk to Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr., in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

He is an Adviser to Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance; Principles of the Law, Policing; and Principles of the Law, Compliance, Risk Management and Enforcement. He previously served as an Adviser on Restatement of the Law, Employment Law.

Jeffrey S. Sutton has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since 2003. He was previously a partner with the law firm of Jones Day and served as State Solicitor of the State of Ohio. In his career as an advocate, he argued twelve cases in the United States Supreme Court and numerous cases in the state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal.

Judge Sutton served as a law clerk to Justices Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court, as well as Judge Thomas J. Meskill of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Judge Sutton served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 2012 to 2016. He was appointed to that committee by Chief Justice Roberts. He has also served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules. He was appointed to that committee by Chief Justice Rehnquist in 2005, and Chief Justice Roberts appointed him to be Chair of that committee in 2009. He is a Council member of The American Law Institute.

Since 1993, Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. Judge Sutton has authored books and articles on a wide variety of topics, including many on state constitutional law and federalism.  His publications include State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent.

Judge Sutton received his B.A. from Williams College and his J.D. from The Ohio State University College of Law.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has jurisdiction over federal appeals arising from the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.  The Court sits in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Potter Stewart United States Courthouse.

Diane P. Wood is the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She has served on the court since 1995. She also is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she teaches in the areas of federal civil procedure, antitrust law, and international trade and business.

Before her appointment to the bench, she was the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Chicago Law School, the first woman to hold a named chair at the school. She also served for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with responsibility for the Division's international, appellate, and legal policy matters. After law school, she clerked for Judge Irving L. Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court.