Claire Eagan

Claire Veronica Eagan (born October 9, 1950) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma and a former Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Effective February 12, 2020, Chief Justice John G. Roberts appointed Judge Eagan as the chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference.

Early life and education Born in The Bronx, New York, (Her middle initial stands for Veronica, which was not given to her at birth, but which she added later as a young woman when she took the sacrament of communion at her Confirmation.)

Career Eagan began her legal career working as a law clerk to Judge Allen E. Barrow of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 1976 to 1978. She wrote an affidavit in support of April Rose Wilkens, whom she knew during her time as an attorney.

Federal judicial service Eagan served as a United States magistrate judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 1998 until 2001.

Assignment to FISC In February 2013, she was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), established in 1978 per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Her term expired May 18, 2019.

She was the author of the August 29, 2013, FISC opinion released on September 17, 2013, explaining that the call metadata collection program was constitutional, and thus "any decision about whether to keep it was a political question, not a legal one". The first FISC opinion written since the Snowden leaks (judges must reauthorize the program every 90 days and generally they are "brief reiterations of the court’s legal analysis"), the lengthy 29-page opinion is thought to have been written "for the purpose of public release". Eagan wrote "metadata that includes phone numbers, time and duration of calls is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, since the content of the calls is not accessed".

Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference Effective February 12, 2020, Chief Justice John G. Roberts appointed Judge Eagan as the chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference. The press notice, released by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, noted that Eagan had served on that committee since December, 2008, when she had been appointed to succeed Judge Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.