Milton Irving Shadur

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American judge

Milton Irving Shadur (June 25, 1924 – January 14, 2018) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois .

Early life and education

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Shadur was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota , and raised in Milwaukee , Wisconsin, where he attended Washington High School , alma mater of fellow future attorneys Hubert Louis Will (whom Shadur would succeed on the federal bench), Newton N. Minow , and Abner J. Mikva . Shadur received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Chicago in 1943. Upon graduation, he joined the United States Navy , where he served as a radar officer on multiple ships, including the USS Sangamon , the victim of a kamikaze attack on May 24, 1945. After earning a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1949, he joined the law firm of Goldberg, Devoe & Brussell, which had become known as Shadur, Krupp & Miller by the time of Shadur's appointment to the federal judiciary, and is today known as Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman. In addition to Shadur, the firm produced a number of other highly regarded jurists, including former United States Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg ; Mikva, who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as White House Counsel ; and United States District Court Judge Elaine E. Bucklo .

Federal judicial service

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On April 2, 1980, Shadur was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to the seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois vacated by Judge Hubert Will. Both Shadur and Will graduated from Washington High School in Milwaukee and the University of Chicago for both undergrad and law school. Shadur was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 21, 1980, and received his commission on May 23, 1980. Although he assumed senior status on June 25, 1992, he carried a full load of civil and criminal cases for another quarter-century, until 2015. While Shadur left the courtroom on September 1, 2017, due to severe spinal stenosis, he never officially retired, handing off his final case shortly before his death.

According to Chief United States District Judge Rubén Castillo , Shadur sat to his right at public ceremonies and private meetings, and "was as close to an unofficial chief judge as anyone who served on our court," in addition to serving a mentor to other jurists; Shadur also wrote most of the rules adopted by the court. Castillo also noted that "Judge Shadur has authored over 11,000 district court opinions, many of which directly impacted the rights of thousands of individuals. No other member of our court can match this stunning body of written work."

Notable cases

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Soon after being commissioned, Shadur oversaw the court-ordered desegregation plan for Chicago Public Schools . He also presided over two key cases involving prisoners' rights . In the first, he approved a consent decree ordering Cook County to improve conditions at their jail, calling for the release of prisoners to curtail severe overcrowding. In the second, he found that class members were deprived of constitutional rights because resolution of their criminal appeals was substantially delayed as a consequence of the state's failure to appoint a sufficient number of attorneys to handle these appeals—meaning that a very large percentage of defendants would serve their entire custodial term before the appeal was heard.

Shadur was among the first federal judges to explicitly acknowledge abuse by Chicago police , using strong language to describe allegations of torture by officers in the 1990s. "It is now common knowledge," Shadur wrote in 1999, "that in the early- to mid-1980s, Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions."

Shadur regularly sat by designation on the First , Second , Third – where he sat on multiple panels with then-Judge Samuel Alito – Sixth , Ninth , and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals and from time to time on the D.C. Circuit as well. He authored approximately 130 published majority opinions and 32 published dissenting opinions (as well as a number of unpublished opinions) for the Courts of Appeals on which he was sitting.

Personal and professional se

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