David F. Levi

David Frank Levi (born August 29, 1951) is an American jurist and former dean of the Duke University School of Law. From 1990 to 2007, he was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, serving as Chief Judge from 2003 to 2007. He had been mentioned as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court.

Early life and education

Levi was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father was Edward H. Levi, a former president of the University of Chicago and United States Attorney General under President Gerald R. Ford. His great-grandfather was A.G. Becker. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in history and literature magna cum laude in 1972 and then entered the graduate program in history at Harvard where he eventually specialized in English legal history, receiving a Master of Arts. He received his Juris Doctor in 1980 from the Stanford Law School, where he graduated Order of the Coif and was president of the Stanford Law Review. In October 2003 he was appointed Chair of the Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure, which sits at the top of the federal judiciary's rulemaking process; in 2010 he was reappointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to serve as a member of that committee.

Other service

He was the first president and a founder of the Milton L. Schwartz American Inn of Court, now the Schwartz-Levi American Inn of Court, at the King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis, and has served as Chair of the Ninth Circuit's Task Force on Race, Religious and Ethnic Fairness and as the President of the Ninth Circuit District Judges Association.

In 2005, Levi was elected to the Council of the American Law Institute (ALI) and currently is serving as its president. A member of the ALI since 1991, Judge Levi was an Adviser to its Federal Judicial Code Revision Project and an Adviser to the institute's new Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

When Levi stepped down as dean of Duke Law School on June 30, 2018, he became the inaugural director of the school's Carl and Susan Bolch Judicial Institute founded that year with the mission of "advancing the importance of rule-of-law principles and a fair and independent judiciary and raising public awareness during lapses or failures in the rule of law." Levi retired from the Institute on June 30, 2022, and was named the director emeritus of the Bolch Judicial Institute and the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean Emeritus of Law of Duke University . In 2026, he was awarded the Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law by the Bolch Judicial Institute in recognition of his judicial and academic service .

He is co-author of Federal Trial Objections (James 2002). He is on the Rehnquist Center's National Board of Advisers.

Personal Levi married Nancy Ryerson Ranney in 1973. He and his wife have two sons, Joseph Ranney Levi and William Ranney "Will" Levi. Like his father, Will Levi is also an attorney and former Supreme Court clerk. He worked for Justice Samuel Alito during October Term 2011 and served as chief of staff to Attorney General Bill Barr.