The 2001 Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics was presented to the Honorable Shirley Mount Hufstedler of Los Angeles, California on October 20 at the U.S. Supreme Court during the annual American Inns of Court Celebration of Excellence. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hosted the event and gave welcoming remarks.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Judge Hufstedler to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in September 1968. She served for eleven years until President Jimmy Carter appointed her Secretary of Education. In January 1981, Judge Hufstedler returned to private life, teaching and practicing law. She has served on the Board of trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Institute for Judicial Administration, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the American Law Institute.
She has also served on the governing boards or visiting committees of the U.S. Military Academy, the Institute for Civil Justice, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of Southern California Law Center, the Institute for Court Management, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Advisory Council for Appellate Justice, the American Judicature Society, the Center for National Policy, the American Law Institute and Occidental College.
Judge Hufstedler serves on the board of directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Salzburg Seminar, and as a trustee of the California Institute of Technology. She is on the board of directors of Harman International Industries and is an emeritus director of Hewlett Packard Company and U.S. West, Inc.
Judge Hufstedler is the first woman to receive the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Award. Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote in a letter of Nomination: “Shirley Hufstedler has served our profession and her country with dignity, grace, intelligence, wit and constant caring for young lawyers, who continue to look up to her in awe. I know. I was once one of them, and though I am now older, my admiration remains unabated.”