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Mr. John G. Kester, Partner
Williams & Connolly LLP
Washington, D.C.

John G. Kester, a member of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP, was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on June 18, 1938. He received a B.A. degree in 1959 from the University of Wisconsin, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. The following year he studied in France at the Université d'Aix-Marseille as a Fulbright Scholar. In 1963, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was President of the Harvard Law Review.

From 1963 to 1965, Mr. Kester served as Law Clerk to Associate Justice Hugo L. Black of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1968, he was a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Duke University Law School. From 1968 to 1969, he taught constitutional law as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.

In 1965, he entered active military service in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps and was assigned as Assistant to the General Counsel of the Army until 1968. As a civilian in 1969, he was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, and remained in that office until joining the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams, Connolly & Califano in 1972.

In January 1977, Mr. Kester was appointed by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to be The Special Assistant to the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. In 1979, he again became a member of the firm of Williams & Connolly LLP.

In 1981, Mr. Kester was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He was also appointed by the Secretary of the Navy to the U.S. Naval Academy Academic Advisory Board, and by the Secretary of Defense to the Defense Science Board Committee to Review the Environmental Impact of Basing the MX Missile. He also served as a Senior Adviser to the U.S. Senate Democratic Conference Strategy Group on National Security Policy, and was a founder of Democrats for Defense. In 1985, Mr. Kester was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Review Commission. In 1995, he was appointed to the Army Science Board.

Mr. Kester was a member of the Legal Ethics Committee of the District of Columbia Bar from 1982 to 1988. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Federalist Society, the Acquisitions Committee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, the American Society of International Law, and the American Bar Association sections on litigation and administrative law. He is a Director of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. In 1986, Mr. Kester was appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Nancy Reagan Drug Abuse Fund. He also served on the Philadelphia Regional Selection Panel of the White House Fellows program.

In 2004, Mr. Kester was appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States as a member of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Professional and Other Activities:

Supreme Court and state and federal appeals have been a major part of Mr. Kester's legal practice. In addition to participating in many other U.S. Supreme Court matters, he has presented oral argument to the Supreme Court in the cases of General Building Contractors Ass'n v. Pennsylvania, 458 U.S. 375 (1982); Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984); San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Committee, 483 U.S. 522 (1987); Van Cauwenberghe v. Biard, 486 U.S. 517 (1988); U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995); California Public Employees' Retirement System v. Felzen, 525 U.S. 315 (1999); and MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. ___ (2007). He also appeared as counsel and prepared principal briefs in O'Brien v. Brown, 409 U.S. 1 (1972), Columbia Broadcasting System v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94 (1973), and General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997), and filed major amicus curiae briefs in Nebraska Press Ass'n v. Stuart, 489 U.S. 602 (1976), Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989), Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370 (1996). He is a member of the Supreme Court Advisory Panel of the National Association of Attorneys General and a recipient of that organization's Volunteer Recognition Award. He has also briefed and argued many cases in several state supreme courts as well as most of the federal courts of appeals. He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Court of International Trade, the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, and many other federal courts.

Legal Writings:

On legal and related topics, Mr. Kester’s published writings include "Soldiers Who Insult the President:  An Uneasy Look at Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice" (Harvard Law Review, June 1968); "Constitutional Restrictions on Political Parties" (Virginia Law Review, May 1974); "12 Great Moments of Washington Law" (Washingtonian, September 1981); "An Un-Supreme Court" (New York Times, September 30, 1982); "The Law Clerk Explosion" (Litigation, Spring 1983); "Are Lawyers Becoming Public Enemy Number One?" (Washingtonian, February 1984); "Faculty Participation in the Student-Edited Law Review" (Journal of Legal Education, March 1986); "The Brighter Side of Clerkships" (Journal of Legal Education, June 1986); and "Some Myths of United States Extradition Law" (Georgetown Law Journal, April 1988); and "State Governors and the Federal National Guard" (Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Winter 1988).

Also "Bush's Court" (Washingtonian, March 1990); "No Holds Barred" (Washingtonian, April 1991); "20th Century Lawyer" (review of autobiography of Erwin N. Griswold)(Harvard Law Bulletin, June 1992); "Nowhere To Hide" (Washingtonian, January 1993); "Term Limits Are a Good Idea" (Washington Post, March 14, 1994); "State Term-Limits Laws and the Constitution" in Crane & Pilon, The Politics and Law of Term Limits (1994); "How To Let the States Limit Terms" (Washington Times, February 23, 1995); "Amendment Time" (Washingtonian, March 1995); "The Bipolar Supreme Court" (Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1995); "After the Court's Ruling, Strategies for Term Limits" (Washington Times, June 6, 1995); "Down With Incrementalism" (Washingtonian, September 1995); "Forever Federal" (Washingtonian, December 1995); "Appeals Courts Keep More and More Opinions Secret" (Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1995); and "Cluttered Statute Books" (Washington Post, February 9, 1996); and "How the Law in Washington Became a Very Big Business" (Washingtonian, February 2006).

National Security Publications:

Mr. Kester's writings on military subjects include "The Future of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" (AEI Foreign Policy & Defense Review, February, 1980); "Do We Need the Service Secretary?" (Washington Quarterly, Winter, 1981); "Designing a U.S. Defense General Staff" (Strategic Review, Summer 1981); "Revamp the Joint Chiefs of Staff" (Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1982); "Politics and Promotions" (Parameters, December 1982); "Strengthening Defense Without Breaking the Budget" (with Walter Slocombe) in Center for National Policy, Budget and Policy Choices 1983; "America's Strongest Military Officer" (New York Times, Nov. 19, 1983); "Thoughtless JCS Change Is Worse Than None" (Armed Forces Journal International, November 1984); "The Role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" in Kaufman et al., eds., U.S. National Security (1985); "The Office of the Secretary of Defense With a Strengthened Joint Staff System" in Blechman and Lynn, eds., Toward a More Effective Defense (1985); "The Reasons To Draft" in Bowman et al., eds., The All‑Volunteer Force After a Decade (1986); "The Chemical Warfare Review Commission -- Two Years Later" in Center for Strategic and International Studies, Chemical Warfare Policy (1987); "Wanted:  More Meddling" (Washingtonian, November 2002); and "Job One:  Protect Us" (Washingtonian, April 2005).

Miscellaneous Publications:

Mr. Kester’s publications on historical subjects include "Charles Polke: The Indian Trader of the Potomac" (Maryland Historical Magazine, 1995); "Treasure Hunt" (Washingtonian, April 1996); and four books: A Singing Mother: Poems and Verse of Frances R. Kester (1997); Lemon Pie and Love (1998); Weser, Wolf, Winnebago and Westward (1999); and In Three Millennia (2002). In addition, he has published a number of occasional articles in popular publications on a variety of topics.

Mr. Kester has been awarded the Department of the Army Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, and the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the Key to the City of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He has three sons and resides in Alexandria, Virginia.

He then returned to Kentucky, where he served as Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Economic Security (1969-70), Legal Counsel to the Governor (1970-71), and Legislative Counsel to the Minority in the State House of Representatives (1972).

He was called to Washington, where he served as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States (1973-75), Assistant to the Chairman of the Federal Power Commission (1975-77), and Deputy Minority Counsel to the United States Senate Energy Committee (1977-79). He then left government and entered private practice. He returned to serve as Assistant Director of the White House Office of Policy Development and Special Assistant to the President of the United States (1981-83), and Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy (1983-86).

In 1986 he was appointed by the President to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his appointment to the bench, he led three missions under the auspices of the United States Department of State, teaching American jurisprudence at the judicial academy of the Soviet Union (May 1991), the Commonwealth of Independent States (October 1991), and Russia (June 1993). By appointment of the Chief Justice of the United States, he served on the Committee on Appellate Rules of the Judicial Conference from 1992-94. From 1994 to 2000, he served on the Judicial Conference Committee on Automation, and chaired its Budget subcommittee. He served as chair of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association, 2001-02.