Honorable Rya Zobel

Professional Standards Subcommittee

Judge Zobel was appointed as a U. S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts in 1979. From 1990 to 1994, she served as chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Automation and Technology. Before that she was a member of the Conference's Committee on the Operation of the Jury System and the Committee on Judicial Improvements. She also chaired the American Bar Association's National Conference of Federal Trial Judges in 1991-92. In April 1995, she was appointed as the seventh director of the Federal Judicial Center, a position that she held until July 1999. Judge Zobel is a graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School and was in private practice prior to joining the bench. She has been a member of Harvard University's Board of Overseers, a governor of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, a trustee of the New England Deaconess hospital, and a director of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Ms. Zobel also served as an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University from 2000 -2002. Her course was entitled: The Judiciary: Policy, Government and Inter-Branch Relations.