Judge Ilana Rovner holding a photograph
of her father Zelig Diamants
Ilana Diamond Rovner announced last week that she will take senior status on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Her ABA biography is remarkable in its account of honors and achievements. The first woman on the Court of Appeals, she leaves four other women in their chambers, one vacated four years ago by Amy Coney Barrett on her elevation to the Supreme Court.
But her letter to President Biden - informing the President of her decision to take senior status, opening a seat on the Court of Appeals, strikes a different note - that of gratitude and solicitousness for others. Her warmth and personal experience is captured in a recent interview published in the Chicago ribune.
Her modesty and humility is striking. She leads not with a list of her accomplishments, but with her report that "(m)y mother and I came to the United States from Latvia in 1939, to join my father who had left a year earlier, as refugees from the Nazis, escaping the unspeakable fate that our family and friends in Europe. This great nation took us from certain death and gave us every possible opportunity to make a new life for ourselves."
"Our experience", she writes, "gave me a deep respect for the rule of law and a personal understanding of the horrors that can ensue when it is abandoned. I was never more proud than on the days that I was sworn in as an American citizen and, years later, with my parents of beloved memory looking on, as a United States District Judge, and then a United States Circuit Court Judge...In the service of justice, I have endeavored always to be mindful of the ways in which the legal system can overlook, exclude, and give unequal treatment to those without resources, status, or societal acceptance."
- GWC 1/14/2024
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