Judge reviews career choices
“Timing is everything.” That’s what Judge Gary Lancaster, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, will tell you about his career choices.
The 1967 Brownsville Area High School graduate was intent on becoming a high school basketball coach when he left home to attend Slippery Rock State College.
“That was the ’60s and a lot of things were changing. The civil rights movement was at its peak,” Lancaster said. “Suddenly, dribbling a basketball became less important. I wanted to be a part of it and I thought being a lawyer would be the best way to do that.”
Lancaster’s early career put him into the midst of civil rights issues. Immediately following his graduation from the University of Pittsburgh Law School in 1974, he worked as regional counsel for the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
Lancaster moved on to serve as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County from 1976-78, then on to a private firm for 10 years where he practiced criminal and civil litigation representing large corporations.
“I think every lawyer at some point thinks of becoming a judge because you go from arguing the law to interpreting it,” Lancaster said.
Even when he thought about the possibility of entering the judiciary, Lancaster said he thought of the county and state level, because that was where he argued cases as an attorney. Even then, it wasn’t a driving ambition for him.
“It really wasn’t a lifelong goal. I didn’t have that direction in mind. Being a good lawyer was the goal, but when the opportunity came up, I took it,” Lancaster said.
In 1987, Lancaster accepted an eight-year appointment as a federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Lancaster for a district judgeship, which was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Lancaster was elevated to his current job in September 2009, just in time for the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. He found himself again in the midst of civil rights cases, this time involving political protesters.
“It was a balancing act of those two competing interests: the first amendment rights of the demonstrators versus the safety of those attending the G-20,” Lancaster said.
Lancaster said he still has one G-20 case before him, involving incidents in Oakland. Earlier this month he awarded American Civil Liberties attorneys representing some of the protesters $96,000 for their work. During the G-20, Lancaster granted an injunction for the protest group Code Pink’s exhibit in Point State Park, but denied requests from other groups to rally on a city bridge and camp overnight at Point State Park.
Lancaster said dealing with the G-20 protest issues was interesting.
“You learn from all your cases and you try to get better with each of your cases. As a judge, you try to be a better, wiser judge,” Lancaster said.
In looking back at his career Lancaster said he would make the same decisions given the times in which he was selecting his profession.
“If I were a 19-year-old student today, I’m not sure I’d do it again,” Lancaster said. “Sometimes I think I’d like to be a teacher. My brother is a teacher and I’ve always admired him.”
Lancaster said he would someday like to teach American history. For now his job is interpreting the U.S. Constitution and federal laws.
“Our Constitution has been around for more than 200 years now, since 1790, and you would think that by now all the bugs have been worked out of it, but every day you see new interpretations handed down. You have to grow with the times. You can’t be frozen in 1790. For example, the Constitution says ‘no cruel or unusual punishment,’ yet in 1790, corporal punishment was in vogue and you could be beaten or flogged for stealing. Today, we would consider it cruel and unusual,” Lancaster said.
Lancaster said he has watched the legal profession itself change over the years.
“I think a lot of attorneys take cases as a business decision rather than fighting against injustice,” Lancaster said. “Now they are litigators rather than trial attorneys.”
His advice to those considering the law as a profession:
“Don’t go into it unless you really love it. This profession is too hard, too stressful to go into lightly. Don’t go into it unless there is nothing else you would want to do,” Lancaster said.