The nominations, from last year, were awaiting Congressional confirmation.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: President Barack Obama has re-nominated three Indian Americans to key judicial posts to begin the first full working week of 2014.
The three, who were originally nominated in 2013 and are still awaiting Congressional confirmation, are Vince Girdhari Chhabria of the northern district of California, Manish S. Shah for the US District Judge of the northern district of Illinois, and Indira Talwani for the US District Judge of Massachusetts.
The three re-nominations were announced along with 64 others that Obama is hoping to push through while the new year is still young. All three would add to the fast-growing list of Indian Americans in high-ranking positions with the US government’s judicial branch; Chhabria, in particular, would become the first South Asian Article III judge in the history of California.
A graduate of University of California Santa Cruz in 1991, Chabbria received his JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley in 1998. He served as a law clerk to Judge Charles Breyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, from 1998 to 1999. He also clerked for Judge James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, from 1999 to 2000.
In 2001, he worked as an associate at the law firm of Keker & Van Nest, LLP, and that same year went on to work for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court. From 2002 to 2004, he worked as an associate at the law firm of Covington & Burling, LLP.
A native of Connecticut, Shah graduated from Stanford University with honors and distinctions, and earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. He worked as a litigation associate in San Francisco for some time, and then came to Illinois to clerk for Judge James B. Zagel. He joined the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago in 2001, where he has amassed a stellar reputation for convictions against violent criminals, public corruption, and other illegal activities.
Talwani earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982 from Harvard College, where she graduated cum laude. She then earned her Juris Doctorate (JD) from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1988; again, she graduated with honors, this time with the Order of the Coif, a prestigious honor society of law school graduates at UC Berkeley. Most recently, she was a partner at the law firm of Segal Roitman LLP in Boston.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com