Hon. Robert Dow, Jr.

Robert M. Dow, Jr. has served as a United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois since December 2007. On October 1, 2020, he began a three-year term as Chair of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. Judge Dow has been a member of that Committee since 2013 and has chaired its Rule 23 and MDL Subcommittees. From 2010 to 2013 he served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules and from 2012 to 2018 he was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Circuit Rules for the Seventh Circuit. He has sat by designation on the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits and is a member of the American Law Institute.  He teaches complex litigation as an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University Law School.  Prior to his judicial service, Dow was a partner at the Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown LLP, where he was a member of the firm's Litigation, Telecommunications, and Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation practice groups. Judge Dow received a B.A. (1987) from Yale University, M. Phil. (1990) and D. Phil. (1997) degrees in International Relations from the University of Oxford, which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a J.D. (1993) from Harvard Law School. Immediately after law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Joel M. Flaum of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.