Deanell Reece Tacha
2010 Kansan of the Year

Deanell Reece Tacha has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit since her appointment by President Reagan in 1985. From 2001-2007, she was Chief Judge. In that capacity, Judge Tacha was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States and was named by Chief Justice Roberts to the Conference's Executive Committee in 2006. Prior to that, Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed her to serve two terms as Chair of the Conference's Committee on the Judicial Branch, the committee largely responsible for the federal judiciary's relationship with both Congress and the executive branch. Judge Tacha is also a former member of the United States Sentencing Commission, which is responsible for studying and making recommendations to Congress about federal sentencing policy.

Judge Tacha has represented the judiciary of the United States in several international exchanges. From 1999-2000 and in 2004, she was selected to participate in the American College of Trial Lawyers Anglo-American Legal Exchange among members of the bench and bar in the United States and in the United Kingdom. In 2007, she again represented American judges in the Canadian-American Legal Exchange. In 1992, the American Bar Association selected her to be a member of a delegation of lawyers and judges who traveled to Albania to assist that nation develop a new constitution and government.

As a spokesperson for enhanced ethics, professionalism, and civility in the legal profession, Judge Tacha has been active in the American Inns of Court movement. She helped found the local Judge Hugh Means American Inn of Court in Lawrence. She served on the national Board of Trustees of the American Inns of Court and was its national president from 2004-2008. Judge Tacha's contributions to the legal profession were recognized in her receipt of the John Marshall Award in 2008, which the American Bar Association bestows for positively impacting the justice system, and the Devitt Award in 2007, which is the highest honor given to a federal judge for distinguished lifetime service.

Judge Tacha grew up in Scandia, Kansas. She received her B.A. in American Studies from the University of Kansas, where she was elected to Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa, and where she was also selected as Outstanding Senior Woman. She received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1971 and was appointed a White House Fellow that year by President Nixon, becoming only the second Kansan selected to do so. Following her fellowship year, she practiced law with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C.

In 1973, Judge Tacha returned to Concordia, Kansas and married fellow Kansan John A. Tacha. She practiced law in Concordia for one year until she joined the faculty of the University of Kansas School of Law in the fall of 1974. She held several administrative positions at KU, including serving as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs from 1981-1985.

Judge Tacha has continued to serve KU and the State of Kansas even while carrying out her responsibilities on the federal bench. She was national president of the KU Alumni Association from 1988-1989. She has served on the KU Endowment Association Board of Trustees since 1992 and is currently vice chair of that board. She served on the Board of the Kansas Health Foundation from 1992-2010. In 2001, Governor Bill Graves appointed her Chair of the Kansas Territorial Sesquicentennial Commission, whose work Governor Kathleen Sebelius recognized by Proclamation on January 29,2004.

Judge Tacha has devoted much of the last decade of her volunteer work to the founding of Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area, a new federal heritage area approved by Congress in 2006 and designated by the Secretary of the Interior in October of 2010. This new federal heritage area is comprised of the forty-one counties along the Kansas-Missouri border and is intended to preserve and relate the powerful stories of the enduring struggle for freedom that played out along this border before the Civil War and in the years since. Judge Tacha led the effort for federal designation and is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees.

In Lawrence, Judge Tacha has served on numerous local boards, including The Shelter, Inc., the Lawrence Memorial Hospital Endowment Association, the Lawrence Arts Center, the Lied Center, the Hall Center for the Humanities, and First United Methodist Church. For her service to the Lawrence community, she received the Athena Award in 2009 and was designated Lawrence's Citizen of the Years in 2008 by the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce.

Judge Tacha and her husband have four children—John, David, Sarah and Leah—and four grandchildren. The couple resides in rural Douglas County.