Pauline Newman

Pauline Newman (born June 20, 1927) is an American lawyer and jurist formally serving as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. As of 2025, she is the longest-serving active federal judge, although she was suspended from her duties in September 2023 due to concerns about her productivity and cognitive ability, which she disputes.

Ranking among the most distinguished federal judges, she has been called "the heroine of the patent system", "the Federal Circuit's most prolific dissenter", and "the greatest ally to inventors with respect to [calling out] the ignorance of the [Federal Circuit], district courts, and at times even the Supreme Court". Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore commented of Newman that "many of her dissents have later gone on to become the law—either the en banc law from our court or spoken on high from the Supremes".

Education and career Newman was born on June 20, 1927, in New York City, to Maxwell H. and Rosella G. Newman. Growing up during and in the aftermath of World War II, Newman "learned to fly planes, drive racecars and ride motorcycles". At the time, it was unusual for women to work in chemistry, and "no chemical firm would hire her except American Cyanamid". Newman surpassed that record on June 30, 2022, but "remains an active judge" and has been described as "the court's institutional memory bank". In 2015, she endowed a lecture series on science, technology, and society, at her undergraduate alma mater, Vassar College, with the inaugural lecture being delivered on April 2, 2015, by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson. That same year, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg praised Newman for inspiring women with "her intelligence, her diligence, her devotion to a very difficult area of the law". A 2017 analysis of the impact of Newman's dissents has shown that her positions are often adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal. In October 2022, Newman endowed and initiated the Pauline Newman Program for Science, Technology and International Law at NYU Law. In remarks published in 2023, Federal Circuit Chief Judge Moore said that "there can be no doubt that Judge Newman is the heroine of the patent system".

In August 2026, Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, introduced a bill in the United States Congress to designate courtroom 201 in the Federal Circuit's Howard T. Markey National Courts Building as the "Pauline Newman Courtroom".

Jurisprudence

Newman has written many important opinions about law of patents in the United States. In Arrhythmia Research Technology, Inc. v. Corazonix Corp., she wrote an opinion for the panel finding that the use of an algorithm as a step in a process did not render the process unpatentable. In In re Recreative Technologies Corp., she wrote the opinion finding that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences exceeded its authority when it considered a claim of obviousness in the reexamination of a patent previously held by the examiner not to be obvious with respect to the references cited. In Intergraph Corporation v. Intel Corporation, she highlighted the right of a patent owner to refuse to license, even to a party that has become completely dependent on the patent. In Jazz Photo Corp. v. United States International Trade Commission, she clarified the law of repair and reconstruction (permitting the owner of a patented item to fix the item when it breaks, but not to essentially build a new item from the parts of an old one), writing that it was not a patent infringement for one party to restore another party's patented "one-use" camera to be used a second time.

With respect to the court's federal contracts jurisprudence, in 2010 she wrote a dissenting opinion in M. Maropakis Carpentry, Inc. v. United States. Stanfield Johnson has called her the court's "great dissenter", and has said that her dissents in the area of federal contracts "consistently reflect the view that a primary responsibility of the court is to serve 'the national policy of fairness to contractors'". He writes: At the core of Judge Newman's dissenting jurisprudence is the premise that the sovereign as a contracting party should be accountable for its actions, subject only to limited exceptions not to be presumed, unnecessarily expanded, or imposed in a formalistic doctrinaire way that ignores or masks the facts of government conduct. Where the facts justify it, contractors should be entitled to a 'fair and just' remedy, and the Federal Circuit is there to make sure this happens.

In Merck KGaA v. Integra Lifesciences I, Ltd. (2005), the Supreme Court modified a point of law by expressly adopting Judge Newman's position.

In April 2023, Newman wrote a dissent in SAS Institute Inc v. World Programming Ltd., asserting that the majority had conflated infringement and copyrightability questions and failed to enunciate the burden of proof.

Investigation Initiation In April 2023, it was reported that Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore had demanded an evaluation of whether then 95-year-old Newman could keep up with a case load expected for a Federal Circuit judge, noting Newman's excessively long times to submit judicial opinions. Some of Newman’s fellow judges in court orders have accused Newman of “paranoid” and “bizarre” behavior.

The initial report by Gene Quinn for IPWatchdog noted that "Newman has filed dissenting opinions in at least two recent cases that show no signs she is suffering from any disability", stating that these were "classic Newman dissents, do not read as if they were written by law clerks, and do not show signs of decline or disability". The March 24, 2023, order stated that unnamed court staff and judges had raised concerns about potential impairments of Newman's cognitive abilities and other concerns.

Quinn questioned why Newman would have been offered an opportunity to assume senior status, and continue hearing cases in that status, if there were questions about her competence to hear cases at all. The filing noted that Newman had been given "only a few days to comply with requests for mental evaluations and her private medical records". On May 18, in response to the controversy, the office of United States House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan stated that "Judge Newman is an exemplary jurist who has long stood for the Constitution and earned every right to keep her seat on the bench and make decisions about her future herself."

On June 6, it was announced that Newman would not be assigned to hear new cases until the investigation is complete. At the same time, it was reported that the focus of the investigation had shifted from the judge's competency to her alleged failure to cooperate with the investigation by refusing to turn over medical records and submit to a neurological examination, a development referred to in a Law360 piece as "Kafkaesque".

On June 28, Bloomberg News reported that Newman's lawyers, with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), had filed information with the court stating that Ted L. Rothstein, a neurologist and professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences had "examined the judge and found 'no significant cognitive deficits'", concluding that her "cognitive function is sufficient to continue her participation in her court's proceedings". A Bloomberg reporter who sat with Newman for an hour-long interview for the story described Newman as "fully in command, answering questions about complicated legal matters with authority while shuffling large case binders around her office without assistance".

On July 11, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order requiring the parties to the dispute to enter into mediation, to be conducted by retired D.C. Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith. On August 4, 2023, a Federal Circuit panel, composed of Judges Moore, Sharon Prost, and Richard G. Taranto, recommended suspending Newman from hearing cases for one year over her alleged failure to cooperate with the investigation. Rothstein, the neurologist, criticized the court for misrepresenting his findings in the document recommending Newman's suspension. Judge Edith Jones of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a letter subsequently published in The Wall Street Journal, described the refusal of the Federal Circuit to transfer the case to another circuit for review as "inexplicable".

Suspension On September 20, 2023, Newman was suspended by the Federal Circuit's Judicial Council from hearing new cases for one year. The suspension is renewable, should Newman not comply with the Judicial Council's requests. Newman is expected to appeal on constitutional grounds, with Professor Hellman noting that "it is the functional equivalent of removing the judge from office". Former Chief Judge Paul Redmond Michel also published such a letter, expressing concerns about the effect of these proceedings on "first, the integrity of the court; second, the interests of parties seeking justice at the Federal Circuit; and third, procedural fairness and balance". On September 6, 2024, the suspension was extended for another year, with the explanation that the suspension would be renewed if Newman continued to defy the court's orders.

In late August 2024, Newman received imaging (including a perfusion CT) and a neurological exam by a neurosurgeon who is also an attorney. A report of the findings dated September 17, 2024, stated that Newman possesses an "extraordinarily high level of cognitive ability" and deemed her "cognitively fit to return to active duty". In February 2025, however, three court-appointed physicians—a neuroradiologist, neuropsychiatrist and professor of neurology—criticized the findings and claimed that the neurosurgeon's use of perfusion CT scanning was against standard medical practice in assessing cognitive function. Orders were subsequently made for Newman to provide all her unredacted medical records due to the potential for medical conditions and/or medications to be contribution to her purported cognitive decline. The NCLA, however, responded that impeachment was the only remedy available to remove a federal judge. Newman appealed her suspension to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The judges reportedly expressed 'skepticism' that the suspension was unlawful or unconstitutional, but did express surprise that the complaint was not sent to another appellate circuit.

Supreme Court review On March 12, 2026, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed a petition for a writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Newman, which seeks to challenge the indefinite suspension of the 98-year-old judge, keeping her from the bench since late 2023. Newman argues that the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit exceeded its legal authority with the indefinite suspension, which the petition characterizes as a functional removal from office without impeachment. The petition asks the Supreme Court to determine if the 1980 Judicial Conduct and Disability Act's ban on judicial review of Council orders applies to acts that exceed statutory authority, and if it prohibits courts from hearing claims for prospective relief against such actions. On June 15, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the petition.