Thomas Rex Lee

Thomas Rex Lee (born December 28, 1964) is an American jurist who was a justice of the Utah Supreme Court from 2010 to 2022. Lee is also a lecturer at Harvard Law School

and an adjunct professor/distinguished lecturer at Brigham Young University 's (BYU) J. Reuben Clark Law School (JRCL) following his appointment to the bench.

Lee is a pioneer in law and corpus linguistics —the application of corpus linguistics to determine ordinary meaning in statutes—being the first American judge to do so in an opinion.

Contents

• 1 Early life and education

• 2 Career

  • 2.1 Utah Supreme Court

    • 2.1.1 Authorship of opinions

  • 2.2 Post-court career

• 3 Jurisprudence

• 4 Works

• 5 Personal life

• 6 See also

• 7 References

• 8 External links

Early life and education

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Thomas Rex Lee was born in 1964 to Janet (née Griffin) and Rex E. Lee . He grew up in Arizona , Utah, and Northern Virginia . Lee attended Brigham Young University , graduating in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts _summa cum laude _ in economics . He then attended the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the _University of Chicago Law Review _ and graduated in 1991 with a J.D. degree with high honors.

After law school, Lee clerked for J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 1992. He then entered private practice at the Salt Lake City-based law firm of Kimball, Parr, Waddoups, Brown & Gee, taking a one-year leave of absence to serve as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 to 1995.

Career

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After his Supreme Court clerkship, Lee entered private practice at the Salt Lake City law firm Kimball, Parr, Waddoups, Brown & Gee. He left the firm in 1997 to join the faculty at BYU's JRCL. At the law school, Lee taught courses in Civil Procedure and Intellectual Property Law, and a seminar on the United States Supreme Court. He also served as Associate Dean (2008-2010) and was named the Rex and Maureen Rawlinson Professor of Law. Following his 2010 appointment to the bench Lee remained a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the JRCL.

During his years as a full-time law professor, Lee was also of counsel at Howard, Phillips, & Andersen, handling intellectual property litigation. He was counsel in multiple trademark infringement cases brought by or against automobile manufacturers such as General Motors and Ford Motor Company . He also developed a part-time appellant practice, arguing numerous cases in federal courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court.

Lee took leave of the JRCL from 2004 to 2005 to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the United States Justice Department .

While at the JRCL, from 2002 to 2004, Lee also served as the lead counsel in cases brought by the state of Utah in relation to plans to put nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation .

Utah Supreme Court

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On May 28, 2010, Utah Governor Gary Herbert nominated Lee to fill the vacancy in the Utah Supreme Court left by the retirement of Michael J. Wilkins . Receiving a unanimous vote (5–0) from the Utah Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee in mid-June 2010, Lee was confirmed by the full Senate on June 23, 2010. Lee was sworn into office on July 19, 2010; his mentor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, administered the oath . On January 19, 2022, Lee sent a letter to Governor Spencer Cox , informing him that he would be resigning, effective July 31, 2022. His stated reason was "to pursue other opportunities in the legal profession.". However, Lee ended up retiring from the court on June 30, 2022.

Authorship of opinions

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Lee has been a prolific judicial writer. An empirical study of Utah Supreme Court opinions by political scientist, Adam Brown, found that in the approximately first three years on the court, Lee authored more opinions than any other justice over the 16-year period studied, writing some form of opinion (whether majority, dissenting, or concurring) in 43% of the opinions published while he was a justice.

"Whereas some justices release a concurring or dissenting opinion in only a handful of cases that they hear," Lee is a prolific writer of such opinions, releasing them in around 16% of the Court's opinions.

Of

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