J. Harvie Wilkinson III

Harvie Wilkinson III is a federal judge whose life was touched by so many romantic novels that he set out to write one himself. He is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He has served as a law clerk to Justice Lewis Powell of the United States Supreme Court, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, Editorial Page Editor of a large metropolitan newspaper (The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot), and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

Judge Wilkinson was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal by the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the highest outside award offered by the University. He was awarded the Lawrenceville Medal, the highest award given by the Lawrenceville School. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences despite not doing very well in math and science.

He is also the author of several books: Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics, 1968; Serving Justice: A Supreme Court Clerk’s View, 1974; From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, 1979; One Nation Indivisible: How Ethnic Separatism Threatens America, 1997; Cosmic Constitutional Theory:  Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governance, 2012; and All Falling Faiths: Reflections on the Promise and Failure of the 1960s, 2017.

Judge Wilkinson lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He and his wife Lossie have two children, Nelson and Porter, and three grandchildren.