42 Facts About Diane Wood

Diane Wood previously served as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Diane Pamela Wood was born on July 4,1950, in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Lucille Padmore Wood and Kenneth Reed Wood.

Diane Wood lived in nearby Westfield, New Jersey, where her father was an accountant at Exxon, and her mother worked for the Washington Rock Girl Scout Council.

Diane Wood is the second of three children, with an older sister and a younger brother.

When Diane Wood was 16, her family moved to Houston, Texas.

Diane Wood graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in English with high honors.

Diane Wood was then accepted to University of Texas School of Law.

Diane Wood earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in 1975, graduating with high honors and Order of the Coif.

Diane Wood was among the first women at the University of Texas admitted as a member of the Friar Society.

Diane Wood clerked for Judge Irving Loeb Goldberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1975 to 1976 and for Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court from 1976 to 1977.

Diane Wood was one of the first women to serve as a law clerk for a Supreme Court justice.

Diane Wood began her teaching career as an assistant professor of law at Georgetown University from 1980 to 1981.

Diane Wood was the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago and the only woman on the faculty when she began in 1981.

Diane Wood was a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice from 1985 to 1987.

Diane Wood is a member of the American Law Institute and sits on its Council.

Diane Wood is a member of the American Society of International Law, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences where she serves as Chair of the Council.

Diane Wood has pursued various law reform projects through the American Bar Association and the Brookings Institution Project on Civil Justice Reform.

In January 2021, the University of Chicago Law School, where Diane Wood teaches as a senior lecturer, announced that it would honor Diane Wood for her 25th anniversary on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit with a special edition of essays published by her colleagues in the University of Chicago Law Review.

Diane Wood was confirmed unanimously by the Senate and received her commission on June 30,1995.

Diane Wood became the second woman ever to sit on the Seventh Circuit.

Diane Wood is known for building consensus on the court and rallying other judges around her positions.

Diane Wood served as Chief Judge from October 1,2013, to July 3,2020.

On December 9,2021, Diane Wood announced she would assume senior status upon confirmation of her successor.

Diane Wood retired from the bench on April 30,2024.

Diane Wood was considered a likely candidate for the United States Supreme Court in the Obama administration.

Speculation that she might be appointed intensified after Justice David Souter's retirement announcement, and Diane Wood was the first candidate Obama interviewed for the post, meeting with her at the White House while she was visiting from Chicago.

When Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire at the end of October 2009 term, Diane Wood's name was again widely put forward as a likely replacement.

Judge Wood stated in her dissenting opinion in Christian Legal Society v Walker that the record was insufficient to grant injunctive relief.

However, Diane Wood held that the injunction issued by the district court, which prohibited violent conduct by protesters, struck a proper balance and avoided any risk of curtailing activities protected by the First Amendment.

On June 25,2018, Diane Wood wrote a concurrence in the denial of en banc after the Seventh Circuit blocked Indiana's fetal burial requirement and ban on disability-based abortion.

Diane Wood's concurrence was joined by Ilana Rovner and David Hamilton.

In early September 2020, Wood wrote the opinion in a ruling against the Illinois Republican Party's challenge against Governor J B Pritzker's COVID-19 orders.

Diane Wood was joined by Michael Brennan and Amy St Eve, both of whom are Trump appointees.

Diane Wood was elected to the American Law Institute in 1990 and was elected to the ALI Council in 2003.

Diane Wood is Chair of the ALI's Nominating Committee and an Adviser on two projects: the Restatement Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States project and the Restatement Third, The Law of American Indians.

Diane Wood used to be an Adviser on the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation project and the Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure project.

Diane Wood has been called a "rock star of the written word" by Mother Jones.

Diane Wood has written extensively in many areas of the law, and a full bibliography can be found at the University of Chicago Law School website.

Diane Wood has six children, including three stepchildren, from her previous two marriages.

Diane Wood was married from 1978 to 1998 to Dennis J Hutchinson, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

Diane Wood married her first husband, Steve Van, while both were law students.

Diane Wood plays oboe and English horn in the North Shore Chamber Orchestra in Evanston, Illinois, in the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, and in the West Suburban Concert Band in LaGrange, Illinois.