Claire Veronica Eagan (born October 9, 1950) is a

Senior Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district, which each cover o ...

of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma and a former Judge of the

United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants aga ...

. Effective February 12, 2020, Chief Justice

John G. Roberts John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases, including ''Nati ...

appointed Judge Eagan as the chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference.

Early life and education

Born in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, Eagan graduated from Trinity Washington University with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in 1972, and later from

Fordham University School of Law Fordham University School of Law is the law school of Fordham University. The school is located in Manhattan in New York City, and is one of eight ABA-approved law schools in that city. In 2013, 91% of the law school's first-time test take ...

with a

Juris Doctor The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice law ...

in 1976. At Fordham, Eagan was a commentary editor of the ''

Fordham Law Review The ''Fordham Law Review'' is a student-run law journal associated with the Fordham University School of Law that covers a wide range of legal scholarship. Overview In 2017, the ''Fordham Law Review'' was the seventh-most cited law journal by o ...

''. "Eagan, Claire." FJC Bio
Accessed May 16, 2018.

Career

Eagan began her legal career working as 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 ...

to Judge Allen E. Barrow of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 1976 to 1978. She went into private practice attorney at the Hall Estill law firm in

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

from 1978 to 1998. She wrote an affidavit in support of

April Rose Wilkens April Rose Wilkens (born April 25, 1970) is an American woman serving a life sentence at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center after her conviction for the murder of Terry Carlton and the subject of the podcast series ''Panic Button: The April Wilken ...

, whom she knew during her time as an attorney.

Federal judicial service

Eagan served as a

United States magistrate judge In United States federal courts, magistrate judges are judges appointed to assist U.S. district court judges in the performance of their duties. Magistrate judges generally oversee first appearances of criminal defendants, set bail, and conduct ...

for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 1998 until 2001. On the recommendation of Senators James Inhofe and

Don Nickles Donald Lee Nickles (born December 6, 1948) is an American politician and lobbyist who was a Republican United States Senator from Oklahoma from 1981 to 2005. He was considered both a fiscal and social conservative. After retiring from the Senat ...

, Eagan was nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma by President George W. Bush on September 4, 2001, to a seat vacated by Thomas Rutherford Brett. Eagan was confirmed by the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

on October 23, 2001, on a Senate vote and received her commission the next day. Eagan served as the chief judge of the court from 2005 to 2012. Eagen assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi-retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the Federal judiciary of the United States, federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of servi ...

on October 1, 2022. She worked with Larry Morris of the

Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board is the parole board of the state of Oklahoma. The Board was created by an amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution in 1944. The Board has the authority to empower the Governor of Oklahoma to grant pardons, parole ...

in 2011, before he was appointed to the board, to support at-risk youth.

Assignment to FISC

In February 2013 she was appointed to the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants ag ...

(FISC), established in 1978 per the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign po ...

. Her term expired May 18, 2019. She was the author of the August 29, 2013, FISC opinion released on September 17, 2013, explaining that the call

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

collection program was constitutional, and thus "any decision about whether to keep it was a political question, not a legal one". The first FISC opinion written since the

Snowden leaks Snowden may refer to: * Snowden (surname), a given name and a family name People * Edward Snowden, former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 Music * Snowden ...

(judges must reauthorize the program every 90 days and generally they are "brief reiterations of the court’s legal analysis"), the lengthy 29-page opinion is thought to have been written "for the purpose of public release". Eagan wrote "metadata that includes phone numbers, time and duration of calls is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, since the content of the calls is not accessed." In the opinion, Eagan said "data collection is authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to issue orders to produce tangible things if there are reasonable grounds to believe the records are relevant to a terrorism investigation." The opinion authorized the FBI to "collect the information for probes of 'unknown' as well as known terrorists." She also noted that no U.S. telecommunications company had legally refused to turn over customer metadata, "despite the mechanism for doing so".

Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference

Effective February 12, 2020, Chief Justice

appointed Judge Eagan as the chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference. The press notice, released by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, noted that Eagan had served on that committee since December, 2008, when she had been appointed to succeed Judge

Merrick B. Garland Merrick Brian Garland (born November 13, 1952) is an American lawyer and jurist serving since March 2021 as the 86th United States attorney general. He previously served as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of ...

on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Press Release. February 21, 2020.
Accessed March 20, 2020.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eagan, Claire 1950 births Living people 21st-century American judges 21st-century American women judges Fordham University School of Law alumni Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma Judges of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court People from the Bronx People from Tulsa, Oklahoma Trinity Washington University alumni United States district court judges appointed by George W. Bush United States magistrate judges