Rya zobel biography of barack
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Judge Rya Zobel of the U.S. District Court (MA) to receive Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Outstanding Contributions to Justice
By Ed Cohen
NOTE: Reporters are welcome to attend the award ceremony Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C. But please contact the College for details and a press pass. For security reasons, the College does not publish or widely distribute details about large gatherings of judges.
RENO, NV (Sept. 25, 2023) – Senior U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel, who survived a childhood in Nazi Germany to become one of the most respected trial judges in the federal judiciary, has been selected as the 2023 winner of the highest honor of The National Judicial College, the Sandra Day O’Connor Award.
“I am truly honored by this award,” Judge Zobel said.
The formal presentation of the O’Connor Award medal to the 91-year-old is scheduled for Nov. 2, 2023, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., during the annual
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Judicial Heroes & Legends: July 2022 – Hon. Rya W. Zobel
In 1979, församling created kvartet additional Article III judgeships on the United States District Court in Massachusetts. Along with a well-known Harvard lag professor and two exceedingly popular Massachusetts state court judges, President Jimmy Carter nominated Rya Zobel, then the first woman partner at Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, a large Boston law firm. When she was confirmed, Judge Zobel became the first woman appointed to the federal bench in all of New England. Her path to that distinct honor was anything but typical and further evidence of Judge Zobel’s intelligence, perseverance and courage, traits that have characterized her since her childhood.
Born in 1931 in what was soon to be Nazi Germany, Rya Weickert Zobel grew up in Zwickau, a small town in east Germany. Her mother was a concert violinist, and her father managed a literary arts publishing company. The famil
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The Honorable Rya W. Zobel, Senior United States District Court Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Boston, MA
Nominated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the Honorable Rya Zobel became the first woman to be named to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, taking senior status in 2014.
As a child, Rya Zobel grew up in Nazi Germany. She was born in 1931, the first child of Paul Wiechart, a German who worked for a printing and publishing company, and his Hungarian wife, Elsie. In 1945, Russian troops arrested Zobel’s father, and she never saw him again. As he was being taken away, he tasked Zobel to take care of her mother and younger brother. A few hours later, soldiers took her mother away. She spent 10 years in Russian prisons and prison camps. Friends helped the two children and, when relatives who lived in what had become West Germany learned what happened, they arranged for the children to be brought to their au