Stewart Richard Dalzell (September 18, 1943 – February 18, 2019) was a
United States district judge
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...
of the
.
Education and early career
Born in
Hackensack,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, Dalzell graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business with a
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...
degree in 1965 and received his
Juris Doctor from the
University of Pennsylvania Law School
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (also known as Penn Law or Penn Carey Law) is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is among the most selective and oldes ...
in 1969. Dalzell was a financial analyst for the
National Broadcasting Company in New York from 1965 to 1966, and was a visiting lecturer in law at
Wharton from 1969 to 1970.
Legal career
From 1970 to 1991, Dalzell was a lawyer in private practice in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
at the law firm
Drinker, Biddle & Reath. In 1971 he served as treasurer for the unsuccessful mayoral campaign of longtime friend
W. Thatcher Longstreth, and later was involved in the controversy concerning Philadelphia's Home Rule Charter, which mayor
Frank Rizzo
Francis Lazarro Rizzo (October 23, 1920 – July 16, 1991) was an American police officer and politician. He served as Philadelphia police commissioner from 1968 to 1971 and mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. He was a member of the Democ ...
sought (unsuccessfully) to amend to allow him to seek an additional term in office. In 1976, Dalzell served as the treasurer for the successful campaign of
John Heinz
Henry John Heinz III (October 23, 1938 – April 4, 1991) was an American businessman and Republican politician from Pennsylvania. Heinz represented the Pittsburgh suburbs in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 and ...
for the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
.
Federal judicial service
Judge Dalzell was nominated by President
George H. W. Bush on July 24, 1991 to the
, to a new seat authorized by 104 Stat. 5089. He was confirmed by the Senate on September 12, 1991, and received commission on September 16, 1991. He assumed
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 October 31, 2013. His service terminated on December 31, 2016, due to retirement.
He died of
Alzheimer's disease on February 19, 2019, in Philadelphia.
During his tenure on the bench, Judge Dalzell authored a number of law review articles and essays. ''See, e.g.'', Stewart Dalzell & Eric J. Beste, ''Is the Twenty-Seventh Amendment 200 Years Too Late?'', 62 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 501, 544 (1994) (arguing for the application of judicial review over the constitutional amendment process); Stewart Dalzell, ''One Cheer for the Guidelines'', 40 Vill. L. Rev. 317 (1995) (providing reflections on Sentencing Reform Act); Stewart Dalzell, ''Judging Technology: An Eighteenth Century Institution Meets Twenty-First Century Cases'', 30 Creighton L. Rev. 1107 (1997) (Forward to Law and Technology Issue); Stewart Dalzell, ''Faces in the Courtroom'', 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 961 (1998) (contending that judges have a duty to constantly recognizing the fact “that in every case there is at least one face, and usually more, who not only looks at what we judges do, but is profoundly and personally affected by our actions”); Stewart Dalzell, ''A Voice for Liberty'', 148 U. Pa. L. Rev. 15 (1999) (A Memorial to
Henry W. Sawyer—famed, Philadelphia civil rights attorney).
Notable cases
In 1996, Judge Dalzell penned an opinion in ''ACLU v. Reno'', 929 F. Supp. 824 (E.D. Pa. 1996), as part of a three-judge panel of the District Court pursuant to 47 U.S.C.A. § 561(a). As a member of this panel, Judge Dalzell was one of the first jurists to directly assess the First Amendment status of the Internet. The panel declared the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional and in his separate opinion Judge Dalzell described the Internet as “
e most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country—and indeed the world—has yet seen.” Legal commentators quickly celebrated his opinion as “groundbreaking” and “a welcome break with the American judicial tradition of underestimating the social significance of new media.”. Judge Dalzell's decision finding the anti-indecency provisions of the
Communications Decency Act violated the
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
was ultimately upheld by nine justices of the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in ''
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union''. A majority opinion authored by Justice Stevens and joined by six other Justices (Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer) affirmed the decision in full. Justice O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurred in the judgment in part and dissented in part.
In 1997, following a 14-day hearing, Judge Dalzell granted Lisa Michelle Lambert’s writ of habeas corpus. ''See Lambert v. Blackwell'', 962 F. Supp. 1521 (E.D. Pa. 1997). Lambert had been convicted of the
Murder of Laurie Show
Laurie Show was a 16-year-old sophomore at Conestoga Valley High School who was stalked by her classmates and murdered on December 20, 1991, in the United States. Her body was discovered in her Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home by her mother Hazel S ...
, but Judge Dalzell's opinion detailed the compelling evidence unearthed at the hearing that showed the 1992 state trial in which she was convicted had been corrupted by perjury, witness tampering, fabrication of evidence, and the withholding of information crucial for the defense. Judge Dalzell was moved to declare Ms. Lambert “actually innocent” and thoroughly chastised those responsible for the “miscarriage of justice”—concluding that “in making a pact with this devil, Lancaster County made a Faustian Bargain. It lost its soul and it almost executed an innocent, abused woman. Its legal edifice now in ashes, we can only hope for a Witness-like barn-raising of the temple of justice.” Judge Dalzell’s decision was ultimately reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on procedural grounds—failure to exhaust state remedies. ''See Lambert v. Blackwell'', 134 F.3d 506 (3d Cir. 1997), as amended (Jan. 16, 1998). Four judges of the Third Circuit voted to rehear the case en banc—noting in a dissent from the denial of rehearing that they were “profoundly disturbed by the panel's refusal to consider the merits of Lisa Michelle Lambert's petition for a writ of habeas corpus and by the panel's decision to vacate the judgment of the district court and to remand the case with instructions to dismiss Lambert's petition.” The Editorial Board of the New York Times lauded Judge Dalzell’s decision and decried the Third Circuit’s decision to overturn “Judge Dalzell's decision on flimsy procedural grounds without considering the disturbing evidence in the case.”.
References
See also
*
* https://www.law.upenn.edu/library/archives/other/oralhistory/interviews/transcripts/dalzell.php (oral history)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dalzell, Stewart Richard
1943 births
2019 deaths
Judges of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
United States district court judges appointed by George H. W. Bush
20th-century American judges
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni
University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni