ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Honorable Walter K. Stapleton has been selected to receive the prestigious 2014 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Third Circuit. The award will be presented May 7, 2014 at the Third Circuit’s Annual Judicial Conference by the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and by the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Stapleton is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was first appointed at the age of 36 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon; and served as chief judge from 1983 to 1985. In 1985, President Ronald W. Reagan nominated Judge Stapleton to the U.S. Court of Appeals; he took senior status in 1999.
He has chaired two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States at the request of the Chief Justice of the United States: the Codes of Conduct Committee and the Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction. He was a founding member of the Richard S. Rodney American Inn of Court in 1985, the 17th chartered Inn in the United States.
Stapleton earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. He obtained his LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1959. Upon graduation, he was in private practice from 1959 until his appointment to the bench in 1970. He served as assistant attorney general for the state of Delaware in 1963 and 1964. He earned a Masters in Law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1984.
The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, fosters excellence in professionalism, ethics, civility, and legal skills. The organization’s membership includes more than 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 360 chapters nationwide and more than 97,000 alumni members. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.
