Gladys Kessler

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Image:Gladys Kessler listens to students during Operation Open Door

Gladys Kessler is an United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia.^[1] She was nominated to the court by President Clinton, a Democrat, and is known as one of the most liberal judges in the D.D.C. Judge Kessler was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in July 1994.

After receiving her B.A. from Cornell University and LL.B. from Harvard Law School, she was hired by the National Labor Relations Board. She worked as a Legislative Assistant to a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congressman, worked for the New York City Board of Education, and then opened a public interest law firm. In June 1977, she was appointed Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and from 1981 to 1985, served as Presiding Judge of the Family Division. She was President of the National Association of Women Judges from 1983 to 1984, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ABA’s Conference of Federal Trial Judges and the U.S. Judicial Conference's Committee on Court Administration and Management. From 1983 to 1984 she was also the President of the National Association of Women Judges.

Kessler is the first judge to consider an appeal that the Executive branch is violating the new Detainee Treatment Act.^[2] Lawyers for Mohammad Bawazir argued that the measures Camp Delta authorities instituted to break a six-month hunger strike were abusive, cruel and unusual. Department of Defense spokesmen argued that the Detainee Treatment Act didn't apply to suspects held captive in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.^[3]