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[Neverending]

Our Judge,James Ware,is retiring in August :

I do not think this will effect the Markman ruling in any way. Just FYI.

S.F.'s federal Chief Judge James Ware retiring

Bob Egelko

Wednesday, May 2, 2012


San Francisco's chief federal judge, who upheld the government rendition program for suspected terrorists and recently issued rulings supporting gay rights, is retiring from the bench in August.

James Ware, appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, became chief judge of the Northern District of California in January 2011 when Vaughn Walker stepped down. The office, which includes administrative duties and a reduced caseload, has a seven-year term, but Ware said Tuesday he had been planning to leave after turning 65 in November.

"I've enjoyed my entire tenure, but given the opportunity to re-pot myself, pull it up by the roots and put it down someplace else, I decided I shouldn't pass it up," said Ware, an attorney in Palo Alto for 16 years and a judge in Santa Clara County for two years before his federal appointment.

He said he has prospects of a job as a private mediator and might also join a law school faculty. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is in line to succeed Ware as chief judge, a post filled by seniority.

Ware spent most of his career in San Jose and issued one of his most important rulings there. It came in a suit by five men who accused a local flight-planning company of helping the CIA transport captives to overseas prisons for brutal interrogations, a program known as extraordinary rendition.

Ware dismissed the suit in 2008, saying courts could not decide such matters because of the risk of exposing state secrets. The ruling, defended by both the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations, was briefly overturned on appeal but later reinstated in a 6-5 decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

More recently, Ware took over the case of Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California that Walker declared unconstitutional in 2010. Ware rejected arguments by Prop. 8's sponsors that the ruling should be set aside because Walker had not disclosed that he was a gay man with a longtime partner.

Clinton nominated Ware to the Ninth Circuit in 1997, but the judge withdrew his candidacy after admitting that a story he had told publicly for years, about being the brother of a youth who was shot to death by white racists in Alabama, was false.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. [e-mail]

This article appeared on page C - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/01/BANK1OC0AI.DTL#ixzz1uZTsi4kq




http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/01/BANK1OC0AI.DTL