Thomas R. Lee (born 1964) is an Associate Justice on the Utah Supreme Court. His nomination unanimously passed a vote by the Utah Supreme Court Judiciary Committee in mid-June 2010.[1] Justice Lee was sworn in July 19, 2010.[2]
Justice Lee is the son of former United States Solicitor General Rex E. Lee. He received his bachelors in economics from Brigham Young University (BYU) and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Justice Lee has been a faculty member at BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School since 1997, where he is the Rex and Maureen Rawlinson Professor of Law and teaches in an adjunct capacity after his appointment to the Utah Supreme Court.[3] In 2008 Justice Lee was appointed associate dean for faculty and curriculum at the Clark Law School.[4] Prior to his appointment to the Utah Supreme Court, Justice Lee also worked in private practice for the law firm of Howard, Phillips and Andersen.
In private practice, Justice Lee specialized in intellectual property law. Many of the intellectual property rights cases he has been involved in revolved around trade-mark infringements brought by or against automobile manufacturers such as General Motors and Ford Motor Company. He has also written multiple papers on the issues related to counting non-residents in the census with Lara J. Wolfson. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the United States Justice Department from 2004-2005. In 2002-2004 he served as the lead counsel in cases brought by the state of Utah in relation to plans to put nuclear waste on the Gosuite Indian Reservation.
Justice Lee is a Latter-day Saint. He and his wife Kimberly are the parents of six children. His brother, Mike Lee, was elected a U.S. Senator from Utah in 2010.