Danny Julian Boggs

On the occasion of Judge Boggs's 30th anniversary on the bench, Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a congratulatory letter: "The Nation has benefitted immeasurably from your intellect and judgment. We in the Judiciary admire your devotion to the cause of justice. We enjoy the precision of your writing. And we are forever grateful that our employment does not depend on our answers to the quizzes you give your prospective law clerks."

Danny Julian Boggs (born October 23, 1944) is an American attorney and a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Boggs attended College High School in Bowling Green, where he was a member of the debate team that won the 1959 Kentucky state debate championship.

He received an Artium Baccalaureus (Bachelor of Arts) degree cum laude from Harvard University in 1965 and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1968 with a Juris Doctor degree and a nomination to the Order of the Coif.

At the University of Chicago, he won the Hinton Moot Court Competition and was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.

Boggs began his career with an academic position as a Bigelow Fellow and instructor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1968 to 1969.

Later, he served in a variety of roles in Kentucky state government: first as the deputy commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Economic Security at the state capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky from 1969 to 1970; then as legal counsel and administrative assistant to Governor Louie Nunn of Kentucky from 1970 to 1971; as legislative counsel and assistant to the minority leader of the Kentucky State House of Representatives in 1972; as an attorney for the Kentucky Republican Campaign in 1972; and as deputy campaign director for the Nunn for Governor Campaign in Louisville in 1979.

Boggs started a career in federal government as an attorney for the United States Department of Commerce in 1973.

From 1973 to 1975, he served alongside future Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Frank Easterbrook, and future secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, as assistant to the United States Solicitor General at the United States Department of Justice, who at the time was Robert Bork.

Prior to his judicial appointment, Boggs served with distinction in senior positions in the energy sector: first as assistant to the Chairman of the Federal Power Commission from 1975 to 1977; then as deputy minority counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from 1977 to 1979.

Judge Boggs dissented, stating that the racial discrimination applied in the admissions policy of the law school would not pass even the slightest scrutiny, that the Law School's efforts to achieve a "critical mass" are functionally indistinguishable from an unconstitutional numerical quota for minorities, and that the majority opinion's analysis relying on the obscenity case Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977) was flawed.

On the merits, Judge Boggs disclosed in his dissent the magnitude of racial preferences granted in University of Michigan Law School's admissions by analyzing its admissions data from the record.

Judge Boggs concluded that constructing a diverse educational environment was not a compelling state interest, because the nature and benefits of the experiential diversity that the Law School claimed to seek were conceptually disconnected from the racial and ethnic diversity that it primarily sought, and because the Law School's concept of diversity permitted no logical limitation and threatened to justify even more constitutionally unacceptable outcomes.

Judge Boggs also included in his dissent a Procedural Appendix, detailing the procedural history of the case in the Sixth Circuit and the procedural manipulations by then-Chief Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr., who had violated Sixth Circuit procedural rules by assigning himself to this and other panels and by withholding from the full court an en banc petition for five months, until a time when the court had achieved a Democrat-appointed majority of active judges to assure an ideology-based outcome of the case.

The Supreme Court affirmed in a five to four split decision with three separate concurrences in part and with two dissents.

When not serving in the state or federal government, Boggs engaged in private practice in Frankfort, Kentucky, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and from 1979 to 1981 in Washington, D.C.

Under Ronald Reagan, Boggs served as special assistant to the President in the Executive Office of the President from 1981 to 1983.

Following his appointment as special assistant to the President in the Executive Office of the President, Boggs served in the Reagan administration as Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Energy from 1983 to 1986.

He received the Department of Energy Secretary's Gold Medal.

He was appointed to the court in 1986 and served as its chief judge from September 2003 to August 2009.

Boggs was on the short list of President George W. Bush's candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.

On January 29, 1986, Boggs was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (Cincinnati, Ohio) to take a new seat authorized by 98 Stat.

333. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 3, 1986, and received his commission on March 25, 1986.

During his judicial career, he was variously Secretary, Vice-Chair, and Chair of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association from 2001 to 2002 and a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2003 to 2009.

Boggs was on the short list of President George W. Bush's candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.

288 F.3d 732 (6th Cir. 2002), aff'd, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).

The University of Michigan Law School appealed a district court's decision that the law school's consideration of race and ethnicity in its admissions decisions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The divided Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed five to four in an opinion written by Chief Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr., which held that the Law School's admissions policy was narrowly tailored to serve its compelling interest in achieving a diverse student body, and that its policy was therefore valid.

From 2003 to 2009, Boggs served as Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit.

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).

Writing for the majority, Justice O'Connor held that the Law School had a compelling interest in attaining a diverse student body and that its admissions program was narrowly tailored to serve its compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body, and thus did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.

Justices Thomas and Scalia concurred in part and dissented in part.

Justice Thomas concluded that Michigan did not have a compelling interest in maintaining a public law school and certainly not an elite law school, and that marginal improvements in legal education did not qualify as a compelling state interest.

Chief Justice Rehnquist, in his dissent, agreed with Judge Boggs's argument that the Law School's program bears little or no relation to its asserted goal of achieving "critical mass."

Analyzing admissions data, he noted that the Law School afforded preferential treatment to African American applicants but not to Hispanic or Native American candidates, failing to attempt to achieve any "critical mass" for these minority applicants, and failing to satisfy strict scrutiny analysis.

Justice Kennedy's dissent provided his own analysis of the admissions data to prove similar points that the Law School's admissions program was tantamount to an unconstitutional quota for African American applicants, and that it had failed strict scrutiny.

In 2006, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered on the Senate floor a tribute to Boggs to commemorate his 20-year anniversary on the federal bench, calling Judge Boggs "a Kentuckian who is one of the finest legal scholars of his generation," "a true Renaissance man" with a "fertile, polymath's mind," "[w]ell-read in history, geography, literature, mathematics, and political science," who "not only does … voraciously ingest knowledge, he loves to share it with others."

McConnell also noted that "Judge Boggs delights in hiring clerks of any and all political persuasions, as long as they have a keen mind and are always ready for debate. Of course, these poor clerks know that Judge Boggs will almost always win."

701 F.3d 466 (6th Cir. 2012).

He assumed senior status on February 28, 2017.