For more information, please contact: Gwen Osborne, director of public affairs, (312) 906-5251

Seventh Circuit Judge Diane P. Wood to address Chicago-Kent graduates

May 23 ceremonies will be held at McCormick Place

CHICAGO–April 10, 2004 –- The Honorable Diane P. Wood, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, will deliver the commencement address at Chicago-Kent College of Law's 2004 ceremonies on Sunday, May 23, at 2 p.m. Commencement will be held in the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place Lakeside Center, 2301 S. Lake Shore Drive, in Chicago. Approximately 275 students are expected to receive juris doctor degrees, and 50 master of laws degrees will be conferred.

Wood received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation from law school, she clerked for Judge Irving L. Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. Following her clerkships, she worked briefly for the U.S. State Department on international investment, antitrust, and transfer of technology issues.

She briefly worked in private practice with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling. There, her principal work was in the areas of trial and appellate antitrust litigation, antitrust counseling, general litigation, and international law. Moving from private practice into academia in the 1980s and early 1990s, Judge Wood served on the faculties of the Georgetown University Law Center, Cornell Law School, the University of San Diego Institute of International & Comparative Law, and the University of Chicago.

In 1986, she worked on the project to revise the Department of Justice Antitrust Guide for International Operations. From 1993 until 1995, she was deputy assistant general in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with responsibility for the division's international, appellate, and legal policy matters.

Before her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1995, Judge Wood was the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Chicago Law School, where she currently serves as a senior lecturer. Her scholarship focuses on antitrust, federal civil procedure, and international trade and business.

Between 1989 and 1990, Judge Wood was a member of the senior advisory group of the Brookings Institution's Civil Justice Project, which conducted a detailed study of the problems of cost and delay in the federal civil justice system, and recommended legislation that led to the enactment of the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990.

Judge Wood is also a member of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, where she plays oboe and English horn.