Thomas Hogan
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Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in August 1982 by Republican President Ronald Reagan and became Chief Judge on June 19, 2001. In December 2007, Judge Hogan announced that he will step down as chief judge in May 2008.[1]
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[edit] Education
He graduated from the Georgetown Preparatory School in 1956, Georgetown University, receiving an A.B. (classical) in 1960. He attended George Washington University’s masters program in American and English literature from 1960 to 1962, and he graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1966, where he was the St. Thomas More Fellow. Following law school, Judge Hogan clerked for Judge William B. Jones of the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 1966 to 1967.
[edit] Experience
He served as counsel to the National Commission for the Reform of Federal Criminal Laws from 1967 to 1968, and was engaged in private practice from 1968 to 1982. He has been an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a Master of the Prettyman-Leventhal Inn of Court. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference, Chair of the Courtroom Technology Subcommittee, and served on the Board of the Federal Judicial Center.
The President of the United States was briefly granted the power to line item veto, by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget[1] [2] by President Bill Clinton. However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998 that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.
[edit] Tenure as Chief Judge
Hogan was appointed chief judge in June 2001, just months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to the Washington Post, "He was called upon to help referee precedent-setting arguments over the media's right to protect anonymous administration sources, criminal probes of sitting members of Congress and the military's imprisonment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
He also oversaw the building of a new annex to the court, designed by Michael Graves and dedicated to Judge William B. Bryant.
He also oversaw some of the multiple trials of Colombian FARC member Simon Trinidad.
[edit] In the news
- Hogan ordered Judith Miller of the New York Times jailed after she refused to disclose her confidential source to a grand jury. Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine avoided jail time after he agreed to reveal his source.
- In May 2006 Hogan signed the search warrant authorizing the FBI to search the Capitol building offices of U.S. Congressman William Jefferson, the only such search in United States history.
- In July 2006 Hogan ruled that an FBI raid on a Louisiana congressman's Capitol Hill office was legal. He rejected requests from lawmakers and Democratic Rep. William Jefferson to return material seized by the FBI in a May 20-21 search of Jefferson's office. Hogan dismissed arguments that the first-ever raid on a congressman's office violated the Constitution's protections against intimidation of elected officials.
