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| Frances Struewing DeWine | |
|---|---|
| Name | Frances Struewing DeWine |
| Birth date | 1944 |
| Birth place | Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Occupation | Jurist, Attorney, Educator |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College, Harvard Law School |
| Years active | 1969–2010 |
| Known for | Ohio Supreme Court Clerkship, Appellate Advocacy, Legal Scholarship |
Frances Struewing DeWine was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as a prominent appellate advocate and state-level judge in Ohio during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Her career spanned private practice, government service, and academic appointments, and she was influential in areas of civil procedure, administrative law, and judicial reform. DeWine's rulings and writings intersected with key institutions and figures in American law, and she participated in landmark disputes that engaged the United States Supreme Court, state supreme courts, and federal appellate courts.
DeWine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a family with ties to Ohio civic institutions and Midwestern legal networks connected to Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio. She attended Wellesley College for undergraduate studies, where she was involved with campus organizations affiliated with Phi Beta Kappa and met contemporaries who went on to roles at Harvard University and Yale University. She earned a Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School, where she contributed to the Harvard Law Review and worked with professors whose scholarship influenced developments later taken up by jurists on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.
DeWine began her legal career clerking for a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, then joined a Cincinnati litigation firm that represented clients before the Ohio Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She later served as an assistant attorney general in the Ohio Attorney General's office and argued cases involving administrative agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency in tribal and federal forums. Her appellate briefs and oral arguments reached panels that included judges from circuits such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and were cited in scholarship appearing in the Columbia Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.
DeWine also acted as outside counsel for nonprofit organizations with ties to AARP and the League of Women Voters, advising on litigation strategy connected to voting access and regulatory challenges heard in the Ohio General Assembly and contested in the Ohio Supreme Court.
Appointed to the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas bench in the 1980s, DeWine later won election to a seat on the Ohio Court of Appeals where she sat on panels that reviewed decisions from trial courts across the state and handled interlocutory appeals that were subsequently taken up by the Ohio Supreme Court. Her judicial tenure overlapped with contemporaneous judges from jurisdictions such as the Tenth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit during a period when state appellate courts were responding to shifts in doctrine from the United States Supreme Court under several Chief Justices.
During her time on the bench, DeWine presided over administrative hearings and wrote opinions engaging precedents from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and influential state decisions from courts in New York, California, and Illinois. She participated in judicial committees aligned with the National Center for State Courts and contributed to model rules promoted by the American Bar Association.
DeWine authored and joined opinions that addressed statutory interpretation, sovereign immunity, and procedural matters later cited by practitioners in briefs to the United States Supreme Court and the Federal Trade Commission. One significant appellate opinion clarified standards for administrative deference in disputes involving the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies, drawing on precedent from the Supreme Court of the United States and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Another decision from her court governed evidentiary standards in civil trials and was discussed in conjunction with rulings from the California Supreme Court and the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Her opinions in employment law and civil rights cases were referenced in amicus briefs filed by organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and her analyses of statutory text appeared in compilations alongside scholarship citing the Restatement (Second) of Torts and decisions from the Eighth Circuit.
After leaving full-time judicial service, DeWine accepted visiting professorships at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and lectured at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School on appellate advocacy and administrative law. She published essays in law reviews associated with Columbia Law School and contributed chapters to treatises used by faculty at Georgetown University Law Center and Stanford Law School. DeWine also served on advisory boards for the Federal Judicial Center and chaired panels for the American Bar Association's Section of Litigation.
Her public service included appointments to commissions created by the Governor of Ohio addressing judicial selection and court administration, collaboration with the National Association of Attorneys General on prosecutorial standards, and participation in public forums sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution.
DeWine married a member of an Ohio legal family with connections to the University of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Bar Association; her family engaged with civic organizations such as United Way and cultural institutions including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She mentored generations of lawyers who went on to clerk for judges on the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and state supreme courts, and her scholarship influenced revisions to civil procedure texts used at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School.
Her legacy endures in judicial opinions cited by courts in multiple jurisdictions, in curricula at leading law schools, and in the work of organizations like the National Center for State Courts and the American Bar Association that continue to shape judicial practice and court administration.
Category:American judges Category:People from Cincinnati, Ohio