Louis Falk Oberdorfer (born February 21, 1919) was a United States Supreme Court clerk, attorney, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Tax Division, civil rights worker, and district court judge.
Oberdorfer was born in Birmingham, Alabama to A. Leo Oberdorfer, an attorney and author, and Stella Falk Oberdorfer. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1939 and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1946 after four years in the United States Army during World War II. Oberdorfer served as a clerk for Justice Hugo L. Black in the 1946-1947 term. He then went into private practice in Washington D.C. with the firm Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison as a tax attorney until his friend Deputy Attorney General Byron White asked him to join the Robert Kennedy Justice Department in 1961. He was hired as Asst. Attorney General, Tax Division, but since the division was largely organized and self-sustaining, he focused his energies on many legal issues, particularly civil rights.
He returned to private practice in 1965 with Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering. Oberdorfer remained friendly with the Kennedy family and personally represented Jacqueline Kennedy in a 1966-1967 public legal battle with historian William Manchester over the ownership of interview materials and their publication in his book The Death of a President about the John F. Kennedy assassination. In 1968, Oberdorfer was elected co-chairman of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He served as president of the District of Columbia Bar Association in 1977-1978. When Griffin Bell became attorney general in 1977, Oberdorfer was considered for the deputy position, but was instead appointed to the US District Court for the District of Columbia. He has championed opposition to mandatory sentencing policies, especially with respect to drug offenders. He assumed status as a senior judge in 1992. He has also taught part-time at Georgetown Law Center since 1993.