Frederic N. Smalkin

Frederic N. Smalkin (born May 21, 1946) is a retired United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland and is currently a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he was awarded the James A. May award for excellence in teaching and mentoring.

Military service Smalkin went to college and law school on a set of Army ROTC scholarships. He served as an officer in the United States Army (Regular Army) from 1968 until his honorable discharge, in 1976, earning the Meritorious Service Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster and achieving the rank of captain. He later became a rated pilot and Lieutenant Colonel in the Civil Air Patrol and was awarded its Distinguished Service Medal. He was commissioned in the Maryland Military Department and later promoted to Brigadier General and appointed by the Governor as commander of the Maryland Defense Force (State Guard). Upon relinquishing command of the Defense Force, he was awarded the State of Maryland Distinguished Service Cross.

Professional career Smalkin began his career in public service as law clerk to then Chief Judge Edward Skottowe Northrop of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

Notable cases Two controversial cases stand out from the many that Judge Smalkin heard during his thirty years on the bench. First was his 1987 decision which overturned the conviction of Marvin Mandel, who succeeded Spiro Agnew as Governor of Maryland, for mail fraud and racketeering. Smalkin applied a Supreme Court decision—handed down after Mandel's conviction—which held that the mail fraud statute under which Mandel was convicted did not apply to cases of government corruption. United States v. Mandel, 672 F.Supp. 864 (D.Md. 1987).

The second, and perhaps more notorious, case was Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. v. Glendening, in which Judge Smalkin held that the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles could not deny the local Sons of Confederate Veterans a "vanity" license plate bearing a confederate flag, because to do so would infringe their right to free speech, in violation of the First Amendment. Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Glendening, 954 F.Supp. 1099 (D.Md. 1997). In a later case (in 2015), the Supreme Court decided that the purchasers of license plates cannot assert free speech rights with regard to their content.

Academic and professional associations Honorary Member, Federal Bar Association