University of Pennsylvania Law School - Notable Alumni

Notable Alumni

Penn Law has produced many distinguished alumni in the judiciary, legal academia, business, government and media. Among them are Owen Roberts (US Supreme Court Justice), James Harry Covington (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia), Daniel John Layton (Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court), Robert Nelson Cornelius Nix, Jr., Horace Stern and George Sharswood (Chief Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court), and Deborah Tobias Poritz (Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court). The School has also educated Supreme Court justices of foreign countries, including Ayala Procaccia (Supreme Court of Israel Justice), Ronald Wilson (High Court of Australia Justice), Yvonne Mokgoro (Constitutional Court of South Africa) and Jasper Yeates Brinton (architect of the Egyptian court system, Justice of the Egyptian Supreme Court and former U.S. Legal Advisor to Egypt). Several Court of Appeals Judges have also graduated from Penn Law, e.g., Arlin Adams, Max Rosenn, Dolores Sloviter and James Hunter III (judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Phyllis Kravitch (Senior Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit), and Helene N. White (judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit).

The School has also produced law firm founders, including James Harry Covington (co-founder of Covington & Burling), George Wharton Pepper (Senator from Pennsylvania, and founder of Pepper Hamilton), Russell Duane (co-founder of Duane Morris), and Stephen Cozen, (co-founder of Cozen O'Connor).

Other graduates that distinguished themselves in legal academia and practice are university presidents Mark Yudof (President of the University of California system), John Frederick Zeller III (President of Bucknell University) and Rodney K. Smith (President of Southern Virginia University), Robert Butkin (Dean of the University of Tulsa College of Law), William Schnader (drafter of the Uniform Commercial Code), William Draper Lewis (founder of the American Law Institute and Dean of Penn Law), Henry Martyn Hoyt, Jr. (Solicitor General of the United States), E. Grey Lewis (General Counsel of the U.S. Navy), Bernard Wolfman (Fessenden Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School), Jonathan Z. Cannon (Blaine T. Phillips Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and Deputy Administrator of the EPA). Anthony Amsterdam (professor at New York University School of Law), Khaled Abou El Fadl (professor of law at UCLA School of Law), and Curtis Reitz, the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Penn Law's first female graduate was Carrie Burnham Kilgore, in 1883, while Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, who was the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in the U.S., graduated from Penn Law in 1927.

Politicians that have graduated from Penn Law include Joseph Sill Clark (Mayor of Philadelphia, and U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania), Charles Robert Miller (Governor of Delaware), Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. (former Chairman CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and U.S. Ambassador to Sweden), Raul Roco (former presidential candidate and Secretary of Education in the Philippines), Oscar Goodman (Mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada), Harry Arista Mackey (Mayor of Philadelphia), Martin J. Silverstein (U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay) and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (member of the U.S. House of Representatives and women's rights activist).

Entrepreneur and business executive alumni include Safra Catz (President of Oracle Corporation), David L. Cohen (executive Vice-President of Comcast and former Chief of Staff to Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, Scott Mead, former partner and managing director of Goldman Sachs, Peter Detkin (co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, and former Vice-President and assistant general counsel at Intel), Paul Haaga (Vice Chairman of Capital Research and Management Company, a constituent company of the Capital Group Companies), Sam Hamadeh (founder of Vault.com), Edward Benjamin Shils (professor and founder of the first research center for entrepreneurial studies in the world (at Wharton)), Gigi Sohn (founder of Public Knowledge), and Henry Silverman (CEO of Cendant Corporation).

Penn Law has also produced media professionals and artists, like Renee Chenault-Fattah (co-anchor of weekday edition of WCAU NBC 10 News in Philadelphia), Mark Haines (host on CNBC television network), El McMeen (guitarist), Norman Pearlstine (editor-in-chief of Time) and Lisa Scottoline (author of legal thrillers).