Pasco Bowman II

American judge

Pasco Middleton Bowman II (born December 20, 1933) is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Bowman was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia and grew up in New Market and Timberville, Virginia. He graduated from New Market High School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Bridgewater College in 1955. He earned a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law in 1958, where he was a Root Tilden scholar and served as managing editor of the New York University 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 from 1978 to 1979. He was dean and professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law from July 1979 to July 1983. He attended The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School at the University of Virginia and entered Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1959 to 1984. The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment 9 0. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter clerked for Bowman.

Judge Bowman was on the short list of candidates to fill the United States Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in 1987. Bowman was favored for Powell’s seat by North Carolina arch conservative Jesse Helms. However, alongside devout Mormon John Clifford Wallace, Bowman was viewed by the Senate’s Democratic majority as the most controversial amongst the thirteen or fourteen nominees proposed by President Reagan after Robert Bork was rejected. Bowman was viewed as aggressively anti labor and consistently opposed to the rights of women and prisoners, and attracted further controversy because he stated that he believed laws against insider trading should be repealed. White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker heard objections to Bowman from Joe Biden and Robert Byrd on October 26, 1987,