Allen Roger Snyder (born January 26, 1946) is an American

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

and a former nominee to the

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate cou ...

Education and legal training

Snyder earned a bachelor's degree with distinction from George Washington University in 1967 and a J.D. degree ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

'' from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

in 1971. He was a

law clerk A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person, generally someone who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial clerks often play significant ...

for United States Supreme Court justices John Marshall Harlan II, in 1971, and William Rehnquist, in 1972.

Professional career

Snyder joined the Washington, D.C. law firm

Hogan & Hartson Hogan Lovells is an American-British law firm co-headquartered in London and Washington, DC. The firm was formed in 2010 by the merger of the American law firm Hogan & Hartson and the British law firm Lovells. It employs about 2,400 lawyers acr ...

in 1972 as an associate and later became a partner. During Bill Clinton's presidency, Snyder represented Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey during the Whitewater controversy. In addition, Snyder represented actress

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

, successfully blocking an ABC-TV docudrama about her life, according to a September 2004 article about Hogan & Hartson in the Washingtonian magazine. And Snyder represented

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

as its chief corporate attorney during its antitrust fight against Microsoft.

Nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

On September 22, 1999, President Clinton nominated Snyder to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to replace the seat held by the retiring Patricia Wald. Although he is a Democrat, Snyder's nomination initially was thought to be fairly uncontroversial, particularly given his long history as a Washington insider and his support from conservatives like Rehnquist, Sen.

John Warner John William Warner III (February 18, 1927 – May 25, 2021) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the United States Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and as a five-term Republican U.S. Senator from Virginia from 1979 to 200 ...

, and former appeals court judge Robert Bork. His nomination even received a hearing from the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2000. However, with Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate and a presidential election looming, Snyder's nomination languished. Ultimately, the Senate chose not to vote on the D.C. Circuit nominations of both Snyder and

Elena Kagan Elena Kagan ( ; born April 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan ...

. Republican senators claimed that there was some question over whether those D.C. Circuit seats were even necessary, while Democratic senators charged that the Republican leadership in the Senate was trying to keep those two seats open until after the presidential election so that they could be filled with Republican appointees. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated

Miguel Estrada Miguel Angel Estrada Castañeda (born September 25, 1961) is a Honduran-American attorney who became embroiled in controversy following his 2001 nomination by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Colu ...

to the seat to which Snyder had been nominated. Estrada's nomination ran into opposition from Democratic senators, and he withdrew his name from further consideration in early September 2003. Bush subsequently nominated

Thomas B. Griffith Thomas Beall Griffith (born July 5, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who was a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2005 to 2020. Griffith was Senate Legal Counsel, the chief legal o ...

to that D.C. Circuit seat in 2004, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2005.

Later

After Snyder's nomination died, he resigned his partnership at Hogan & Hartson and took early retirement, according to a ''New York Times'' article on August 11, 2002. "Senator Specter congratulated me on how well things had gone and told me he was confident I would be confirmed and told me I would be a great judge," Snyder told the Times. "And then the committee never took a vote." Snyder, who is known to be close friends with Chief Justice John G. Roberts, is a longtime resident of Bethesda, Maryland.

Personal life

On August 10, 1969, Snyder married Jean Port. He and his wife served as emergency foster parents for several years and eventually adopted another daughter from the foster care system. In 2011, Snyder was approached b
Children's Law Center
the largest legal services organization in the District of Columbia, which works to achieve permanency and stability for children. Snyder joined Children's Law Center to work on appellate cases and strategy. He encourages other lawyers near- or post-retirement to consider similar positions. "There is a great unmet need in the community for pro bono service," Snyder told ''The National Law Journal''. "For a retiring lawyer, it is an opportunity to carve out a niche of the law that you care about."

References