President Obama Nominates Justice Andrew David Hurwitz to Serve on the United States Court of Appeals

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Obama nominated Justice Andrew David Hurwitz to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

President Obamasaid, “Justice Hurwitz has proven himself to be not only a first-rate legal mind but a faithful public servant.  It is with full confidence in his ability, integrity, and independence that I nominate him to the bench of the United States Court of Appeals.”

Justice Andrew David Hurwitz:  Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Justice Andrew David Hurwitz has served as Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court since 2003 and as Vice Chief Justice since 2009.  He also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he has taught regularly over the past three decades.  Justice Hurwitz was born in New York City.  He attended Princeton University, where he received his A.B. cum laude in 1968.  After graduating from Princeton, Justice Hurwitz attended Yale Law School and obtained his J.D. in 1972.  In 1969, Justice Hurwitz began his four-year service with the Connecticut Army National Guard, after which he served in the United States Army Reserve from 1973 to 1975.  Upon graduation from law school, Justice Hurwitz began the first of three federal clerkships for Judge Jon O. Newman of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.  Later that same year, he clerked for Judge J. Joseph Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  He then clerked for Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1973 to 1974.  In 1974, Justice Hurwitz joined the Arizona law firm of Martori Meyer Hendricks & Victor (now known as Osborn Maledon), becoming a shareholder in the firm in 1977.  He left the firm in 1980 to spend three years serving as chief of staff to Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt.  In 1983, Justice Hurwitz returned to his prior law firm and spent the next twenty years there, specializing in appellate work and complex civil litigation.  During that time, he argued two matters before the Supreme Court of the United States.  For a brief period in 1988, Justice Hurwitz served as chief of staff to Arizona Governor Rose Mofford.  In 2003, Justice Hurwitz was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court.  He has recently chaired both the Arizona Judicial Council’s Commission on Technology and the Arizona Courts Ad Hoc Committee on the Rules of Evidence and was a member of the Federal Rules of Evidence Advisory Committee from 2004 to 2010.