Laurence Silberman, federal appeals court judge who shaped conservative legal theory, dead at 86

Laurence Silberman, an influential conservative during a long career as an appeals court judge and federal government official, died Sunday at his home in Washington, D.C., 10 days before his 87th birthday. Judge Silberman died of natural causes, his son, Robert Silberman, said. Judge Silberman sat for decades on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the second-most powerful U.S. court because it hears many challenges to federal regulations and has sent many of its members onto the Supreme Court. One of the country’s most influential jurists, Judge Silberman shaped Second Amendment jurisprudence and advocated for a philosophy of “judicial restraint,” an approach that emphasizes the limited role of the judiciary in the U.S. constitutional system.

“It has always seemed rather simple to me that in a democracy federal judges appointed for life may not allow themselves, or should not allow themselves, to make policy judgments,” Judge Silberman said in a 2002 interview for an oral-history project. “One of the things that has disappointed me terribly about being a judge is the recognition as to how few judges and justices are really believers in judicial restraint,” the judge added. Judge Silberman had a varied career in government before joining the bench, serving as a high-ranking government lawyer in the Nixon and Ford administrations and as President Gerald Ford’s ambassador to Yugoslavia. Laurence Hirsch Silberman was born Oct. 12, 1935 in York, Pa. Judge Silberman told the interviewer that he had limited memory of his father, who divorced his mother when he was 9. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Dartmouth in 1957 and, after service in the U.S. Army, a law degree at Harvard University in 1961. He worked in the Labor Department in the early 1970s, helping draft the Occupational Safety and Health Act, a workplace-safety law, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa, which establishes minimum standards for pension plans in private industry.