Susan L. Carney Confirmed as Circuit Judge on U.S. Court of Appeals

The Yale University Administration today applauded the United States Senate’s vote to confirm the nomination of Deputy General Counsel Susan L. Carney to serve as Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Carney will fill the seat of Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker, who assumed senior status in October of 2009. President Obama first nominated Carney to the Second Circuit on May 20, 2010.

Carney has provided legal counsel to the University in its Office of General Counsel since 1998, serving as Deputy General Counsel since 2001. From July through December 2008, she was Acting General Counsel.

At Yale, Carney’s work has been varied and far-ranging, including such legal areas as ethics, business law, intellectual property, research regulation and cooperative research relationships, and international agreements. She also has worked on cases involving art law. She has served on numerous committees of the University. In addition, under the leadership of the General Counsel, she played a key role in developing her office’s Guide to Business Agreements and Contracts, and Working Globally: Legal Considerations. For many years, she taught an innovative legal module in the Business Managers’ Institute, and she has been a fellow of Silliman College.

“I am delighted that the Senate has confirmed Susan’s nomination by President Obama,” said University President Richard C. Levin. “Susan has applied insight, intelligence, and superb legal skills in handling legal matters affecting the University, and displayed the highest standards of integrity. I have no doubt that she will make important contributions to the work of the Second Circuit, the federal judiciary and to the nation they serve.”

“Susan is a first rate lawyer, with exceptional skills, dedication and judgment. She has served with great distinction since joining Yale’s Office of General Counsel, addressing an impressive range of matters, and she has been a wonderful colleague in every respect,” said Vice President and General Counsel Dorothy K. Robinson. “Our country will be well served with her as a judge of the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.”

Before coming to Yale, Carney served as Associate General Counsel of the Peace Corps, in Washington D.C., where her practice included a wide variety of federal and international law issues. A native of the Boston area, she began her practice of law in Boston, where she joined Ropes & Gray as an associate after serving as a law clerk for the Honorable Levin H. Campbell of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1979, she became an associate and then a partner in a private practice as varied as her work at Yale, with much of it for non-profit organizations and educational institutions. While living in Washington, she was president of the Harvard Law School Association of the District of Columbia and prepared an oral history of Helen Patton Wright, the widow of Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia.

A native of Massachusetts, Carney received her A.B. cum laude in Russian History & Literature from Harvard College in 1973, and her J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1977.

She is a member of the Massachusetts, District of Columbia, and Connecticut bars and of the Connecticut Bar Association, and recently completed a three-year term as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of College & University Attorneys.

In New Haven, she has served on the Boards of New Haven Youth Soccer and of the Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee, and has been a volunteer tutor at New Haven Reads. She is married to the journalist and author Lincoln Caplan. They have a daughter, Molly Caplan, a college student.