Vanderbilt University Law School
Judge Gilbert S. Merritt
Adjunct Professor of Law U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Voice: 615-322-2758
Email: gilbert.s.merritt@vanderbilt.edu
Personal Website
Links
Education
LL.M. Harvard University
LL.B. Vanderbilt University
B.A. Yale University
Biography
Senior Judge Gil Merritt was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and he served as Chief Judge from 1989 to 1996. He has served as a Senior Judge on the Sixth Circuit since 2001. Judge Merritt was chairman of the Executive Committee of Judicial Conferences of the United States from 1994 to 1996 and chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on International Judicial Relations for two years. He has served on many other committees and commissions of the federal judiciary. Before he was appointed to the bench, Judge Merritt specialized in federal civil and criminal litigation with the firms of Boult Hunt Cummings & Conners and Gullett Steele Sanford Robinson & Merritt. Immediately after earning his law degree, he served as an Assistant Dean at Vanderbilt University Law School from 1960 to 1961. During the 1960s, he served as Associate Metropolitan Attorney for Nashville, as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, and as Executive Secretary of the Tennessee Codes Commission. He was also a professor on Vanderbilt's law faculty from 1969 to 1970, after which he continued to lecture part-time for 13 years. He was a delegate to the Tennessee Constitutional Convention of 1965, and served as Finance Chairman and Counsel to the Tennessee Democratic Executive Committee. In addition to his distinguished list of published works, he has written approximately 3,000 appellate opinions. He is a member of the Federal, American, Tennessee and Nashville Bar Associations and of the American Law Institute.
Some links on this page require the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
