The Honorable Lee H. Rosenthal, '77: Profiled in the Houston Chronicle

Rosenthal rules federal courts in Houston region with firm hand

In her early days as a trial lawyer, Lee Rosenthal contemplated what it took to be a great judge.

You had to be thoughtful, efficient, compassionate, creative, practical and independent. But above all, she's often said, a judge had to be fair to all.

Decades later she taught a class for judges at Duke University with biographies of the greats - Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and Judge Learned Hand. Now presiding in Houston as chief judge over one of the busiest federal dockets in the country, she often recalls the judges who heard her cases in the late 1970s through the early 1990s - the outstanding ones and those who were flat-out awful.

"I saw how much good a good judge could do and how much worse a bad judge could make any case," said Rosenthal, 65. "I guess I'm grateful to both."

She brought her experience as a lawyer and 25 years on the federal bench to a series of high-profile cases last year that drew national attention.

Her rulings backed disenfranchised citizens and triggered bitter rebukes from local civic leaders in a Voting Rights Act challenge that upended the Pasadena city elections and in a suit that led to sweeping revisions of the Harris County bail system.

Among the dizzying blur of 621 civil and criminal cases before her last year was the indictment of former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman and two aides on charges they lied in campaign filings and helped Stockman solicit $1.2 million under false pretenses.

And perhaps as significantly, Rosenthal has also made a mark in American law beyond her seat at the Rusk Street courthouse. She has lectured and taught about the justice system in five countries, sat by invitation on six circuit courts and risen to national prominence helping shape the rules by which courts will function in an increasingly technological society. She is considered a pioneering voice on how judges should handle troves of electronic evidence in the digital age.

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