Patricia A. Dean
American lawyer
Patricia A. Dean (1949 – October 27, 2004) was an American attorney and a partner with the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, D.C.. She was a deputy clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1978 to 1981, the first woman to serve in that position, and then served as a law clerk for Justice Byron White of the United States Supreme Court from 1982 to 1983.
Early life and education
After graduating from J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax, Virginia, Dean graduated from Georgetown University, continuing on to get her law degree from there in 1981. Her father, Paul R. Dean, was dean of the Georgetown University Law Center for 15 years.
Career
While attending night classes at Georgetown University Law Center, Dean held a job as a court clerk at the Supreme Court. By the time she had completed law school, she had been promoted to the position of deputy clerk, at the time the highest ranking position held by a woman working for the Supreme Court. After graduating, she left the position to become a law clerk for Judge Edward A. Tamm of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, then returned to the Supreme Court as a law clerk for Justice White. Reporting her selection, The New York Times commented, "It may be that she knows the Court better than any law clerk who ever walked in the door."
While a partner with the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, DC, she worked on cases involving Fen-Phen, which was ultimately recalled from the market., She worked with former co-clerk William T. Dzurilla on the defense of a First Amendment challenge to the constitutionality of seven federal, state, and local school aid programs, which culminated in Mitchell v. Helms, a U.S. Supreme Court decision overruling previous authority.
Death
She died of cancer on October 27, 2004.
“Patricia A. Dean” enters the record as american lawyer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Patricia, Dean and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7145429. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2004, 1978 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Patricia A. Dean” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.