Lee M. A. Simpson

Preserving the Ninth Circuit Lee M. A. Simpson

Judge Richard Harvey Chambers served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from his appointment in 1954 to his death in 1994. Serving for seventeen years as chief judge (1959-1976), Chambers fundamentally shaped the court in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. In addition to the imprint he left on legal matters through over 1,600 opinions, he promoted the development of a modern judiciary in the Pacific Trust Territories, helped defeat efforts to split the Ninth Circuit, worked tirelessly to protect the independence of the judiciary, and ensured that the beautiful and historic courthouses of the circuit would be preserved for future generations. Born into a disappearing world of horses, buggies, and steam locomotives, and growing up in the small cotton-farming community of Safford, Arizona, before moving to Tucson and later to San Francisco, Chambers was both an eyewitness to and a participant in the economic, social, political, and demographic changes that shaped the twentieth-century American West.