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Daniel J. Meador

James Monroe Professor of Law Emeritus
LL.M., Harvard Law School
LL.B., University of Alabama,
B.S., Auburn University

Daniel J. Meador is James Monroe Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Virginia. A native of Alabama, he attended The Citadel and received the B.S. degree from Auburn University, J.D. from the University of Alabama, and LL.M. from Harvard University. During the Korean War he served in Korea as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the Army. In 1954-55 he was law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black on the United States Supreme Court. After practicing law in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1957 he joined the law faculty at the University of Virginia where he has spent most of his career.

Meador’s major professional interests focus on state and federal courts—their structure, jurisdiction, personnel, and processes—including comparative studies of English and German courts. He has been involved in numerous projects and organizations concerned with improving the administration of justice in the courts, including membership on the Board of Directors of the State Justice Institute and the American Judicature Society and chairmanship of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements. During 1977-79 he was an Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, heading a newly created Office for Improvements in the Administration of Justice, the office that developed the bill to create the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. During 1998-99 he served as executive director of the congressionally created Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals.

He served as dean of the University of Alabama Law School from 1966 to 1970, chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Journal of Legal Education, and member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He was founding director of the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as its director from 1980 to 1995.

In 1965-66 he was a Fulbright Lecturer in England and in the fall of 1983 was an IREX Fellow in the German Democratic Republic. He served as Visiting Professor of Law in the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in the spring of 1984.

At the University of Virginia, he received the Thomas Jefferson Award, Raven Award, and Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Center for State Courts, the American College of Trial Lawyers Litigation Award, and the Justice Award from the American Judicature Society.

In addition to many articles in legal periodicals, Professor Meador is the author or co-author of nine books on law-related subjects, including Preludes to Gideon, Criminal Appeals: English Practices and American Reforms, Mr. Justice Black and His Books, Justice on Appeal (with P. Carrington & M. Rosenberg), Impressions of Law in East Germany, and American Courts. He is co-editor of a law school casebook titled Appellate Courts Structures, Functions, Processes and Personnel. He has also published two novels: His Father’s House and Unforgotten.

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