Louis F. Oberdorfer

Louis Falk Oberdorfer (February 21, 1919 – February 21, 2013) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Early life and education Oberdorfer was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to A. Leo Oberdorfer, an attorney and author, and Stella Falk Oberdorfer. His family was Jewish. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1939. He then attended Yale Law School from 1939 until fall 1941, when he was drafted to serve in the United States Army. After four years of military service during World War II, he returned to Yale and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1946. Oberdorfer served as a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, an Alabamian who had been a friend and law colleague of Oberdorfer's father.

Professional career

After working as Justice Black's sole law clerk from 1946 to 1947, Oberdorfer went into private practice in Washington, D.C., with the firm Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison as a tax attorney until his friend and law school classmate deputy attorney general Byron White asked him to join the United States Justice Department in 1961. He was appointed assistant attorney general of the Tax Division but, because the division was well organized and largely self-sustaining, he focused his energies on other law-related issues, particularly civil rights. During this time he befriended attorney general Robert F. Kennedy.