Pamela Lynn Reeves (July 21, 1954 – September 10, 2020) was the
Chief United States district judge of the
. She was the first female judge to serve in the Eastern District.
Early life and education
Reeves was born on July 21, 1954, in
Marion, Virginia
Marion is a town in, and the county seat of, Smyth County, Virginia, United States. It is positioned upon Interstate 81, in the Blue Ridge portion of the Southern Appalachian mountains in Southwest Virginia. The town is named for American Revolut ...
. She graduated ''
summa cum laude'' from the
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
in 1976 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 year ...
degree in history.
She received a
Juris Doctor in 1979 from the
George C. Taylor College of Law at the University of Tennessee.
Career
From 1979 to 1985 she worked as an associate at the law firm of Griffin, Burkhalter, Cooper & Reeves
and from 1985 to 1987 as an associate at Morrison, Morrison, Tyree & Dickenson.
From 1987 to 2002, she worked at the law firm of Watson, Hollow & Reeves.
She formed the law firm of Reeves, Herbert & Anderson, P.A. in
Knoxville
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...
, in 2002, where she practiced mediation and litigation concentrated in the area of employment and contract matters. From 1998 to 1999, she served as the first woman President of the Tennessee Bar Association.
In 2019, the
Tennessee Bar Association
The Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) is a voluntary bar association for the state of Tennessee.
History
On December 14, 1881, 69 Tennessee lawyers signed the Charter of Incorporation establishing the Tennessee Bar Association.
References
Exte ...
awarded Reeves the Judicial Excellence Award and the first-ever Professionalism Award.
A few days before her death, the University of Tennessee bestowed her with the University's Distinguished Alumna Award.
Reeves's legal work centered largely on
discrimination suits. She was involved in a
sexual harassment-related case involving the
TVA
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a Federal government of the United States, federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, an ...
just months after receiving her law license, and would go on to represent both plaintiffs and defendants in discrimination-related cases throughout her career.
She also worked as a mediator in sexual harassment cases; during her time at Watson, Hollow & Reeves, she represented government agencies and government officials who, in her words, "had gotten into trouble."
In an interview, she named ''
Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson'', which recognized sexual harassment as a violation of
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
, as her favorite Supreme Court decision.
Federal judicial service
On May 16, 2013, President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
nominated Reeves to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, to the seat being vacated by Judge
Thomas W. Phillips, who eventually took
senior status
Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...
on August 1, 2013.
Her nomination was reported out of committee on January 16, 2014. The motion to invoke cloture was agreed to on March 5, 2014 by a 62–37 vote. Her nomination was confirmed later that day by a 99–0 vote. She received her judicial commission on March 7, 2014,
and she became chief judge on April 1, 2019.
Death
Reeves died on September 10, 2020, from cancer.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reeves, Pamela Lynn
1954 births
2020 deaths
21st-century American judges
21st-century American women judges
American women lawyers
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Judges of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee
People from Marion, Virginia
Tennessee lawyers
United States district court judges appointed by Barack Obama
University of Tennessee College of Law alumni
University of Tennessee alumni