Barbara Durham

Barbara M. Durham (October 6, 1942 – December 30, 2002) was the first-ever female chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court. She also was a former federal judicial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Born in Anacortes, Washington, Durham graduated with a bachelor's degree in finance from Georgetown University. After working for one year at Merrill Lynch, Durham attended Stanford Law School, where she earned a law degree in 1968.

Durham began her legal career as a deputy prosecuting attorney in King County, Washington. She later went into private practice.

Durham first became a judge in 1973 when she was appointed to the Mercer Island District Court, a part-time job. She was elected a judge on the King County Superior Court in 1977. In 1980, Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray appointed Durham to the Washington Court of Appeals. In 1985, Governor John Spellman appointed her to the Washington Supreme Court. Durham was chosen as Chief Justice by her peers in 1995. Durham stepped down as Chief Justice in 1998.

"I have a personal bias in favor of judges working their way up through the judicial system, so that when one gets to the higher court, one is familiar with the system, bottom to top," Durham once said. Durham was Washington's first judge to ever serve at all four levels of the state's courts.

In January 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Durham to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had been vacated by Judge Betty Binns Fletcher taking senior status. The conservative Durham's nomination by a Democratic president was part of a deal brokered between the White House and Washington's senators at the time, Slade Gorton and Patty Murray. Gorton, a Republican, had insisted on Clinton nominating Durham—a conservative judge—to the Ninth Circuit in exchange for clearing the way for Clinton's nominations of three liberals: Ronald M. Gould, Margaret McKeown and William Fletcher. "This is a very happy day for me," Durham said at the time.

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