Judge Stephen F. Williams, 1936-2020

Abstract

The field of administrative law has lost one of its most important and beloved figures, Judge Stephen F. Williams of the D.C. Circuit, who was 83 years old when he died on August 7, 2020.

Since his appointment by President Reagan in 1986, Williams held a reputation as one of the nation’s most formidable judicial minds in the realm of regulation. An early member of the law-and-economics movement during his years as a professor at the University of Colorado Law School (1969-1986), Williams became known on the bench for the economic sophistication of his opinions and for being the D.C. Circuit’s foremost expert in that most complex and consequential area, energy law. In the words of his colleague David Tatel in 2006: “This former law professor converts each case into an intellectually challenging seminar on economics, regulation and administrative law. If we [the judges of the D.C. Circuit] received graduate credit for sitting with Professor Williams, we’d all have our LLMs by now.”