Joseph Sneed

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Joseph Tyree Sneed III (b. July 21, 1920 d. February 9, 2008) was a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He was appointed to the court in July 1973 by Richard M. Nixon after serving for six months as Deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice.^[1]

Education

Southwestern University, B.B.A., 1941
University of Texas School of Law, LL.B., 1947
Harvard Law School, S.J.D., 1958^[1]

Professional career

U.S. Army Air Corps Staff Sergeant, 1942-1946
Faculty, University of Texas Law School, 1947-1957
Assistant professor, 1947-1951
Associate professor, 1951-1954
Professor, 1954-1957
Private practice, Austin, Texas, 1954-1956
Professor of law, Cornell University, 1957-1962
Professor of law, Stanford University, 1962-1971
Dean, professor of law, Duke University, 1971-1973
Deputy attorney general of the United States, 1973^[1]

Federal judicial career

Judge Sneed was nominated to the Ninth Circuit on July 25, 1973 by Richard M. Nixon, to the seat vacated by Frederick G. Hamley. He was confirmed by the Senate on August 3, 1973, and commissioned on August 24, 1973. He assumed senior status on July 21, 1987, and his service terminated on February 9, 2008, due to death.^[1] In his rulings, Sneed said he sought a fair remedy, one that "harmonizes all the notes sounded in the interpretive symphony. Some notes in the symphony, however, should be played very softly, if at all. Those are the notes that sound in distributive justice," he wrote, according to the Washington Post.^[2]

Former law clerk, Nancy Rapoport, recalled:

“

Even though he was a Nixon appointee and I was much more liberal than he, he always impressed me as being very willing to do whatever the law actually mandated (more so than some of the more liberal judges on the court, who were known for bending the law to suit their own purposes) -- in that sense, I always thought of him as a true conservative.^[3]

”

^[4]

Sneed supervised U.S. marshals and FBI agents during the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973. He also served on the judicial panel that appointed Kenneth Starr to investigate Bill Clinton for Clinton's financial investments in Whitewater.^[2]