Diane Wood


Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney and jurist who serves as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
After working in private practice and the executive branch, Wood became the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Wood was nominated to the Seventh Circuit by President Bill Clinton on March 31, 1995. She is considered a liberal intellectual counter to Richard Posner and Frank H. Easterbrook.

Early life and education

Diane Pamela Wood was born on July 4, 1950, in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Lucille Padmore Wood and Kenneth Reed Wood. Wood lived in nearby Westfield, New Jersey, where her father was an accountant at Exxon, and her mother worked for the Washington Rock Girl Scout Council. She is the middle of three children; she has an older sister Judy and a younger brother Bob. When Wood was sixteen, her family relocated to Houston, Texas. In 1968, Wood graduated as valedictorian from Westchester High School in Houston.
Wood graduated with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor's degree in English. She was then accepted to University of Texas School of Law in 1972. There, Wood was an editor of the Texas Law Review and a member of the Women's Legal Caucus. Wood earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in 1975, graduating with high honors and Order of the Coif. Wood was among the first women at the University of Texas admitted as a member of the Friar Society.

Career

Wood clerked for Judge Irving Goldberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1975 to 1976 and for Associate Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court from 1976 to 1977. Wood was one of the first women to serve as a law clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. After clerking at the Supreme Court, Wood was an attorney-advisor for the Office of the Legal Adviser of the United States Department of State from 1977 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980, she practiced at the law firm Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.
Wood began her teaching career as an assistant professor of law at Georgetown University from 1980 to 1981. In 1981, Wood settled in Chicago and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. She was the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago and the only woman on the faculty when she began in 1981. Wood served as Professor of Law from 1989 to 1992, Associate Dean from 1990 to 1995, and the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies from 1992 to 1995. Since her appointment to the Seventh Circuit, Wood has continued to teach at the University of Chicago Law School as a Senior Lecturer in Law, along with fellow Seventh Circuit judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner.
Wood was a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice from 1985 to 1987. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for international, appellate, and policy in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.
Wood is a member of the American Law Institute and sits on its Council. She is also a member of the American Society of International Law, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences where she serves as Chair of the Council. A past member of the American Bar Association, she has served on the governing councils of the ABA's Section of Antitrust Law and its Section of International Law and Practice. Wood has pursued various law reform projects through the American Bar Association and the Brookings Institution Project on Civil Justice Reform. She was also instrumental in developing the University of Chicago's first policy on sexual harassment. While still a full-time law school professor, she was a member of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women.

Federal judicial service

Wood was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by President Bill Clinton on March 31, 1995, to a seat vacated when William Joseph Bauer took senior status. She was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate and received her commission on June 30, 1995. Wood became the second woman ever to sit on the Seventh Circuit. On the bench, Wood is known for building consensus on the court and rallying other judges around her positions. Neil A. Lewis has called Wood an "unflinching and spirited intellectual counterweight" to the Seventh Circuit's well-known conservative heavyweights Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook. She served as Chief Judge from October 1, 2013 to July 3, 2020.
Wood was considered a likely candidate for the United States Supreme Court in an Obama Administration. Speculation that she might be appointed intensified after Justice David Souter's retirement announcement, and Wood was the first candidate interviewed for the post by President Barack Obama, who met with her at the White House while she was visiting from Chicago. When Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire at the end of October 2010 term, Wood's name was again widely put forward as a likely replacement.

Noteworthy rulings

If, in the end, the facts show that nondiscrimination policy does not apply to student organizations, or that SIU is discriminating against CLS based upon its evangelical Christian viewpoint, the district court should certainly enjoin SIU from enforcing its policy.

She cited Lawrence v. Texas to support the proposition that a state may ban discrimination based on either status or conduct. In April 2010, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, . A Supreme Court blogger opined that Justice Kennedy was concerned, that the record might not have developed enough to move forward. Judge Wood stated in her dissenting opinion in Christian Legal Society v. Walker that the record was insufficient to grant injunctive relief. A news reporter has speculated that her dissenting opinion could be a point of discussion in a Supreme Court confirmation proceeding.
Protection of politically controversial speech is at the core of the First Amendment, and no one disputes that the defendants' speech labeling abortion as murder, urging the clinics to get out of the abortion business, and urging clinics patients not to seek abortions is fully protected by the First Amendment.

However, Wood held that the injunction issued by the district court, which prohibited violent conduct by protesters, struck a proper balance and avoided any risk of curtailing activities protected by the First Amendment.
On June 25, 2018, Wood wrote a concurrence in the denial of en banc after the 5th circuit blocked Indiana's fetal burial requirement and ban on disability-based abortion. Wood's concurrence was joined by Ilana Rovner and David Hamilton.

Law reform work

Wood was elected to the American Law Institute in 1990 and was elected to the ALI Council in 2003. She is Chair of the ALI's Nominating Committee and an Adviser on two projects: the Restatement Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States project and the Restatement Third, The Law of American Indians. She used to be an Adviser on the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation project and the Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure project.

Writings

Wood has been called a "rock star of the written word" by Mother Jones. She has written extensively in many areas of the law, and a full bibliography can be found at the University of Chicago Law School . Some representative works include:
Wood is married to Robert L. Sufit, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, to whom she was introduced by her fellow Seventh Circuit Judge Ilana Rovner. She has six children, including three stepchildren, from her previous two marriages.
She was married from 1978 to 1998 to Dennis J. Hutchinson, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law. Wood married her first husband, Steve Van, while both were law students. She and Hutchinson, who became close friends during their time as law students in Texas, separated amicably and remain friends, colleagues and co-parents today.
She plays oboe and English horn in the North Shore Chamber Orchestra in Evanston, Illinois, in the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, and in the West Suburban Concert Band in LaGrange, Illinois.
Wood lives in Hinsdale, Illinois, and is Protestant.