Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a nomination hearing for Eunice C. Lee, who was nominated by President Biden for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, among other nominees.
Lee was born in 1970 on a U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany. She graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University in 1993 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1996.* Prior to graduating from law school, Lee worked as a research assistant for Flemming L. Norcott, Jr., a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court, and interned at the Civil Division of the Justice Department as well as two left-wing dark-money groups, People for the American Way and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Following her law school graduation, she clerked for two federal judges, Susan J. Dlott in the Southern District of Ohio and Eric L. Clay on the Sixth Circuit.
Lee has served as a public defender for over two decades. She worked from 1998 to 2019 in the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City. She joined that office as a staff attorney and was named supervising attorney in 2001. She was also the office’s director of recruitment from 2003 until her departure in 2019. She also served between 2003 and 2019 as an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where she taught a criminal appellate defense clinic.
Since 2019, Lee has served as an assistant federal defender with the appeals bureau of the Federal Defenders of New York. Over the course of her career, she has represented over 380 indigent clients in proceedings before state and federal appellate courts on direct appeal, in post-judgment motions, and in habeas proceedings.
*Not to be confused with another Eunice C. Lee who also graduated from Yale Law School and currently teaches at the University of Arizona.