Claire Eagan
Claire Eagan | |
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File:Claire Eagan District Judge.jpg | |
Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court | |
Assumed office February 13, 2013 |
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Appointed by | John Roberts |
Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma | |
Assumed office October 4, 2001 |
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Appointed by | George W. Bush |
Preceded by | Thomas Rutherford Brett |
Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma | |
In office 1998–2001 |
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Personal details | |
Born | 1950 (age 73–74) Bronx, New York |
Alma mater | Trinity Washington University (B.A.) Fordham University School of Law (J.D.) |
Claire Eagan (born 1950) is a district judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. She joined the court in 2001 after being nominated by President George W. Bush.
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Early life and education
Born in Bronx, New York, Eagan graduated from Trinity Washington University with a bachelor's degree in 1972, and later from Fordham University School of Law with a Juris Doctor degree in 1976. At Fordham, Eagan was a commentary editor of the Fordham Law Review.
Career
Eagan began her legal career working as a law clerk to Allen Edward Barrow of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 1976 to 1978. She was in private practice attorney in Oklahoma from 1978 to 1998. In 2001 Eagan served as a United States magistrate judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma until 2001.
Federal judicial career
On the recommendation of Senators James Inhofe and Don Nickles, Eagan was nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma by President George W. Bush on September 4, 2001, to a seat vacated by Thomas Rutherford Brett. Eagan was confirmed by the Senate on October 23, 2001, on a Senate vote and received her commission the next day.
Assignment to FISC
Eagan served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 2005 to 2012. In February 2013 she was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), established in 2001 per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Her term runs to May 2019.[1]
She was the author of the August 29, 2013 FISC opinion released on September 17, 2013, explaining that the call metadata collection program was constitutional, and thus "any decision about whether to keep it was a political question, not a legal one". The first FISC opinion written since the Snowden leaks (judges must reauthorize the program every 90 days[2] and generally they are "brief reiterations of the court’s legal analysis"), the lengthy 29-page opinion is thought to have been written "for the purpose of public release".[3] U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan said “metadata that includes phone numbers, time and duration of calls is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, since the content of the calls is not accessed.”[2] In the opinion, Judge Eagan said “data collection is authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to issue orders to produce tangible things if there are reasonable grounds to believe the records are relevant to a terrorism investigation.”[2] The opinion authorized the FBI to “collect the information for probes of "unknown" as well as known terrorists.”[2] She also noted that no U.S. telecommunications company had legally refused to turning over customer metadata, "despite the mechanism for doing so".[4]
References
External links
- Claire Eagan at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
Legal offices | ||
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Preceded by | Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma 2001–present |
Incumbent |
Preceded by | Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 2013–present |
- Pages with broken file links
- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
- 1950 births
- Living people
- Trinity Washington University alumni
- Fordham University School of Law alumni
- American women judges
- United States magistrate judges
- Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma
- United States district court judges appointed by George W. Bush
- United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
- People from the Bronx