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Law Enforcement & Legal |
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Washington U.S. Attorney's civil chief who, weeks before joining the federal bench in 1987, delivered Judge Bason's INSLAW ruling to the judge chairing the reappointment panel; later presiding judge of the FISA court. | 1943 | San Antonio, Texas | 2026-09-22 | 2026-10-09 |
Royce C. Lamberth (born 1943, San Antonio, Texas) is a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 after thirteen years in the U.S. Attorney's office for the District, where from 1978 he was chief of the civil division. He took his law degree at the University of Texas School of Law in 1967 and served as a captain in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps until 1974. He presided over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002, was chief judge of the district court from 2008 to 2013, and took senior status on July 15, 2013.1
The Bason Reappointment
On September 28, 1987, Bankruptcy Judge George Francis Bason, Jr. ruled from the bench that the Department of Justice had taken INSLAW's PROMIS software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit." Bason's term was then before a merit selection panel of the district court chaired by Judge Norma H. Johnson, which did not recommend his reappointment. Johnson told the special counsel Nicholas J. Bua that she had received a transcript of Bason's oral ruling from Lamberth, "who at the time was the Chief of the Civil Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia." The report states that Johnson first recalled that a different district judge told her to get the transcript, and on contacting that judge found she was mistaken; it was Lamberth. After contacting Lamberth at the investigators' request she recalled that he handed her a copy and said something to the effect of "You ought to see this"; Lamberth could not recall whether he delivered it or referred her to it. Reagan named Lamberth to the district court on March 19, 1987. Bua's report states that he "was confirmed for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on November 13, 1987," and "was not sworn in until November 16, 1987."2 The Justice Department's September 27, 1994 review of the report wrote that when Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention he "had, in fact, already been nominated to the federal bench" and "was sworn in shortly thereafter, on November 16, 1987."3 Bua concluded that no Justice Department official had improperly influenced the selection panel, that the contact was the only evidence found of any department contact with the reappointment process, and that the episode did not call Johnson's credibility into doubt.12
The report states that Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention because he wanted to avoid "blindsiding" the other judges on the committee he imagined would vote on Bason's reappointment; he correctly assumed he would be confirmed and sworn in before a bankruptcy judge was selected and erroneously believed that the district judges would make the selection. He had also asked the Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Froman, who handled most bankruptcy cases for the government in the District, for her views of Bason, and she told him the government would be better off if Bason were not reappointed. The report wrote that Lamberth "had every reason to try to influence the selection process to select a bankruptcy judge in whom he had confidence," that his approach to the panel's chair was proper "even if he did so solely as a government attorney interested in opposing the appointment of a judge whom he regarded as unfair to the government," and that his conduct "bespeaks restraint, not a campaign to unseat Bason in retaliation for the Inslaw ruling." The report states that Johnson told the Senate subcommittee that she had no contacts with DOJ regarding Bason and received no negative input from DOJ on the Inslaw case, and that she appeared to have told the House committee the same.2
Later Career
Lamberth's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court service ran from 1995 to 2002, the last years as presiding judge. As chief judge from 2008 he sat on the Judicial Conference of the United States. After taking senior status he also sat by designation in the Western District of Texas at San Antonio.1
Footnotes
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Federal Judicial Center, "Lamberth, Royce C.," Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges. https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/lamberth-royce-c ↩︎
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U.S. Department of Justice. Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc. March 1993, pp. 156-157, 160-165. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎
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U.S. Department of Justice. Report of the United States Department of Justice on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc. September 27, 1994, pp. 101-102. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎