The Honorable Richard Clifton

Richard Clifton is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and has been since 2002. After graduating from Princeton University (A.B. 1972) and Yale Law School (J.D. 1975), he served as a law clerk for Judge Herbert Y.C. Choy, the first Hawaii resident to serve on the Ninth Circuit, and then practiced law in Honolulu with Cades Schutte for 25 years. He has taught at the Richardson School of Law intermittently since 1979. He is President-Elect of the Federal Judges Association, a director of the American Judicature Society, the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, and the Hawaii Women’s Legal Foundation, and a member of the American Law Institute, the Ninth Circuit Pacific Islands Committee, the Pacific Judicial Conference, and the executive committee of his court. He has served as an acting associate justice of the Appellate Division of the High Court of American Samoa. He was a member of the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction for ten years, serving as its chairman for four years. For 24 years he was a director of Hawaii Public Radio, six years as its chairman. He is married and has two adult children. He is a devoted fan (no longer long-suffering) of the Chicago Cubs. He assumed senior status as a circuit judge on December 31, 2016, and continues to hear cases in that capacity.