Rachel P. Kovner

Rachel Peter Kovner (born September 29, 1979) is an American lawyer from New York and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Education

Kovner earned her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 2001, and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Stanford Law School in 2006, where she graduated with the highest GPA in the school's history, was inducted into the Order of the Coif, and served as the senior articles editor of the Stanford Law Review.

Legal career

At the start of her legal career, she served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2006 to 2007, and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2007 to 2008.

Federal judicial service

In August 2017, Kovner was one of several candidates pitched to New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand by the White House as judicial candidates for vacancies on the federal courts in New York. On May 10, 2018, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Kovner to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. On May 15, 2018, her nomination was sent to the Senate. She was nominated to the seat that was vacated by Judge Carol Amon, who assumed senior status on November 30, 2016. On August 1, 2018, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. On September 13, 2018, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 21–0 vote.

On January 3, 2019, her nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate. On April 8, 2019, President Trump announced the renomination of Kovner to the district court. On May 21, 2019, her nomination was sent to the Senate. On June 20, 2019, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 21–1 vote. On October 16, 2019, the Senate invoked cloture on her nomination by a 85–3 vote. Her nomination was confirmed later that day by a 88–3 vote. She received her judicial commission on October 17, 2019. On March 28, 2025, she presented the Antonin Scalia lecture on the Roberts court's use of textualism and purposivism at the Harvard Law School which was published later on YouTube.