31 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
31 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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aliases:
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- Christine Cook Nettesheim
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- Christine Miller
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- Judge Christine Miller
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- Judge Nettesheim
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category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
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tags:
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- Person
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- ChristineMiller
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- PROMIS
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- INSLAW
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- CourtOfFederalClaims
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- Judiciary
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summary: "Judge of the Court of Federal Claims who, as hearing officer on the Senate's 1995 referral, ruled on July 31, 1997, that every version of PROMIS was in the public domain."
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born: 1944
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location: "Oakland, California"
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-10-09
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---
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Christine Odell Cook Miller (born 1944, Oakland, [[California]]), who served under the name Christine Cook Nettesheim until September 10, 1994, is a judge of the [[United States Court of Federal Claims]]. She took a degree at [[Stanford University]] in 1966 and a law degree at the University of Utah in 1969, clerked for Judge David T. Lewis of the Tenth Circuit, was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the [[Department of Justice]] from 1970 to 1972 and at the [[Federal Trade Commission]] from 1972 to 1974, practiced in Washington, and served as special counsel to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and assistant general counsel of the U.S. Railway Association. [[Ronald Reagan]] nominated her to the Claims Court on November 23, 1982; the Senate confirmed her on December 10. [[Bill Clinton]] gave her a recess appointment to the same seat on December 10, 1997, and the Senate confirmed her again on February 3, 1998. She took senior status on February 4, 2013, and retired on March 1.[^1]
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### The INSLAW Referral
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On May 3, 1995, by S. Res. 114 of the 104th Congress, the Senate referred S. 740, a bill for the relief of [[INSLAW]] (Senator Orrin Hatch's floor statement is at 141 Cong. Rec. 5910, May 1, 1995), to the Chief Judge of the Court of Federal Claims for an advisory opinion (Cong. Ref. No. 95-338X), after the [[House Committee on the Judiciary]]'s 1992 report had endorsed Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]]'s finding that the department took [[PROMIS]] by fraud and the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] had rejected it in 1993. As hearing officer, Miller ruled on July 31, 1997, that all versions of PROMIS were in the public domain and that the government had always been entitled to use the software as it wished, so that INSLAW was owed no compensation. A three-judge review panel of the court upheld the ruling in a per curiam report dated May 11, 1998. The Justice Department announced the decision in a press release.[^2] In the hearing officer's report Miller described the Justice Department's two inquiries as the "Bua and Dwyer investigations": Nicholas Bua's investigation on behalf of Attorney General [[William Barr]], and a second investigation, in response to INSLAW's criticisms of Bua's report, that Attorney General [[Janet Reno]] asked the Assistant Associate Attorney General to undertake. A footnote in the report quotes [[Bill Hamilton]] on [[Charles Hayes]]: "I said they took him seriously enough that they brought him to Chicago to testify before the Grand Jury, and everything he said is deleted from the [Bua] report."[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Federal Judicial Center, "U.S. Court of Federal Claims: Miller, Christine Odell Cook," Biographical Directory. https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/u.s.-court-federal-claims-miller-christine-odell-cook
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[^2]: U.S. Court of Federal Claims, *INSLAW, Inc. v. United States*, Cong. Ref. No. 95-338X, Report of the Hearing Officer, July 31, 1997, 39 Fed. Cl. 307, https://static.case.law/fed-cl/39/cases/0307-01.json; Report of the Review Panel, May 11, 1998, 40 Fed. Cl. 843, https://static.case.law/fed-cl/40/cases/0843-01.json; Department of Justice press release of August 1997.
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