Summary of the Oral History of Judge Patricia M. Wald
By Elizabeth Runyan Geise
The oral history of Judge Patricia McGowan Wald illustrates the changes in the role of women in the legal profession in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Judge Wald went to law school at a time when some law schools did not even admit women, and left law practice for a decade while raising five children. Yet she went on to a career that included several significant public interest positions, appointment as an Assistant Attorney General in the Carter Justice Department, twenty years as the first female member of the D.C. Circuit, and a final two years as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. She is one of those women who through hard work, perseverance, and a bit of luck, managed to "have it all."
The oral history was conducted for the Historical Society by former Board President and Chair Stephen J. Pollak through seven interviews with Judge Wald, starting in March 1992 and ending in May 2003. It begins with Judge Wald's childhood in Torrington, Connecticut, where Judge Wald was born on September 16, 1928. She had no siblings. Her father was an alcoholic who left the family when Judge Wald was two years old. She was raised in a multi-generational family composed of her mother, grandparents, and various aunts and uncles. Everyone in the household other than Judge Wald's grandmother worked at a factory in Torrington, and none of the family members had much formal education. Judge Wald spent much of her childhood reading books from the local library. When it came time to pick a course at the local high school, her mother encouraged her to pick the "classical" (college prep) track even though the family had no money for college. Judge Wald wound up as the class valedictorian, and received a full scholarship to nearby Connecticut College.
Judge Wald thrived at Connecticut College, and, in 1948, enrolled at Yale Law School. There were only 11 or 12 women in her class, and they all lived together in one house, with future Third Circuit Judge Leon Higginbothem and his wife as chaperones. Judge Wald "immediately took" to law school; she liked the "intellectual discipline" and worked hard. She was an editor on the Yale Law Journal, and her future husband, Bob Wald, was a classmate. After graduation, she became the second female clerk hired by Jerome Frank, who was on the Second Circuit. Her husband clerked for the newly-appointed district judge, Irving Kaufman, and both Judge Frank and Judge Kaufman handled various aspects of the Rosenberg spy case during that year.
At the conclusion of their clerkships, the couple moved to D.C., primarily because it was close to Bob Wald's Navy assignment in Virginia. With a recommendation from Judge Frank in hand, Judge Wald got a job with Arnold, Porter & Fortas, which had 13 lawyers at the time – 10 partners and three associates. She discovered that law practice could be exciting and fun, but left after eight or nine months to have her first child. She had four more children during the rest of the 1950s and never thought much about going back to work.
In about 1962 or 1963, Judge Wald was hired to do some research for a series on the federal rules of criminal procedure. The project ultimately fell apart, but she was back in the legal world. She became involved in a series of projects after that – research and writing on bail reform, law and poverty, and various criminal law and juvenile justice issues. Judge Wald described this era, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was president, as a "hopeful period." There was a feeling that "we can solve problems." But, in 1968, Richard Nixon was elected, which Judge Wald recalled as a "low point in my life." She decided to become a legal services attorney, in part to obtain some real-world litigation experience. After a couple of years, Judge Wald was asked to head a research project for the Ford Foundation on drug abuse. After that, she served on the Ford Foundation Board for five years, which she described as a "terrific experience." She worked briefly on the Shriver campaign in 1972, and then worked at the Center for Law & Social Policy, followed by work at its spinoff, the Mental Health Law Project. There she focused on impact litigation, involving issues such as the education of handicapped children, treatment of mental patients at St. Elizabeth's in D.C., and conditions in juvenile facilities in Texas.
In 1976, with the election of Jimmy Carter, Judge Wald was appointed the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs under Attorney General Griffin Bell. This was a time when women were beginning to hold significant administration jobs, and Judge Wald was part of a network of female friends and colleagues serving in several executive agencies. The DOJ job enhanced Judge Wald's understanding of how laws are made, and, when she later became a judge, gave her an important perspective on legislative history and what she saw as the flaws in a textualist interpretation of statutes.
In 1979, there were two new seats created on the D.C. Circuit. President Carter appointed Judge Wald and Abner Mikva to the seats. Judge Wald described the confirmation process as "one of the worst periods in my life." Both she and Mikva were attacked by right-wing groups – she was attacked as anti-family and an "instrument of the devil." She could do little to respond but her husband did some "truth squad work." Ultimately, only 17 senators voted against her confirmation and Judge Wald was sworn in by Judge Bazelon in August 1979.
Judge Wald describes her twenty years on the D.C. Circuit as composed of three periods. When Judge Wald was first on the court, there was a liberal faction of Judges Wright and Bazelon, Leventhal (joined by the Carter appointees of Judges Wald, Mikva, Edwards and Ruth Ginsburg), and a conservative faction composed of Judges Wilkey, Robb, Tamm and MacKinnon. From about 1983 through the early 1990s, the court changed significantly with the retirement or death of the older judges and the addition of several young, conservative judges – Judges Bork, Scalia, Thomas, Starr, Silberman, Buckley, Williams, Douglas Ginsburg, Sentelle, Henderson, and Randolph. Judge Wald recalled that many of these younger conservative judges had served in the executive branch and "were much more directed about where they thought the court ought to go, jurisprudentially, than the older conservatives." Finally, in the mid-1990s, the court swung back to a 6-5 conservative / liberal split with the additions of Judges Rogers, Tatel and Garland.
Judge Wald describes how her approach to judging has changed over the years. Initially, she had a "terrible tendency to overwrite." She describes one of her early major opinions, Sierra Club v. Costle, 657 F.2d 298 (D.C. Cir. 1981), which involved a challenge to EPA's clean air regulations, as an example. The opinion spanned 200 pages (in slip opinion), and took Judge Wald and her clerks four to five months of intensive work to produce. She wanted to show that she "c[ould] handle" the technical details in an administrative law case of this magnitude. In later years, however, she "fe[lt] more comfortable in being more terse." She realized that sometimes it is better to produce a "less brilliant" opinion that other judges can agree on. Over her years on the court, she became "more humble" as to what courts could do and "perhaps more charitable to other's views." She could still feel bad or mad about a result in a particular case "but perhaps I'm more selective about how much I grieve."
In 1999, after 20 years on the bench, Judge Wald accepted a two-year appointment to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. There she presided over two long trials involving claims of genocide arising from the Bosnian conflict. Judge Wald also sat on five or six appeals at the Hague. The experience "enhanced" her respect for trial judges, and, while some procedures at the Hague could be improved, she found the process as a whole "fundamentally fair."
Finally, in some thoughts that seem particularly apt today (in 2026), Judge Wald stated that she became "increasingly convinced of the importance of having an independent and somewhat feisty and irritable judiciary, regardless of the changes in administration," and "even though I am often in the minority and often disagreed with."
This is an insightful oral history that is well worth reading. It covers the career of one of the most significant female lawyers and judges in D.C. in the second half of the Twentieth Century.
