Pasco Middleton Bowman II (born 1933) is a senior federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
A former Fulbright scholar, Bowman was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia and grew up in New Market and Timberville, Virginia. He graduated from New Market High School, and in 1955 received a B.A. in English from Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia. He took his J.D. from New York University in 1958, where he was a Root-Tilden scholar and served as managing editor of the law review. He then went into private practice of law. From 1958 to 1964, with time out for military service and his Fulbright year at the London School of Economics, he was associated with the New York City law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
Bowman was a member of the faculty of University of Georgia School of Law from 1964 to 1970. He was then dean and professor at Wake Forest University School of Law from 1970 to 1978, and a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1978-79. He was dean and professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law from July 1979 to July 1983. During this entire period he was also a United States Army Reserve Colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1959 to 1984.
On May 24, 1983, Bowman was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan to a seat vacated by Jesse Smith Henley. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 18, 1983, and received commission on July 19, 1983.
Judge Bowman completed the graduate program for judges at the University of Virginia School of Law and received his LL.M. from the University of Virginia in 1986. He was on the short list of candidates to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. in 1987, a seat that ultimately went to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. His service to the federal judiciary includes tours of duty on the Criminal Law Committee, the Federal-State Jurisdiction Committee, the Board of Directors of the Federal Judicial Center, and as chief judge of his court in 1998 and 1999. After twenty years of service as an active judge, he took senior status on August 1, 2003.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter clerked for Judge Bowman.
References
- Pasco Bowman II at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.