Harris L Hartz (born January 20, 1947) is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Early life and education Hartz was born in 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in Farmington, New Mexico, and graduated from Farmington High School in 1963 as valedictorian. He then studied physics at Harvard University, graduating in 1967 with an A.B. summa cum laude. After college, Hartz received a fellowship to pursue graduate study in physics at Princeton University, but dropped out after one year. From 1968 to 1969, Hartz worked on the reelection campaign of U.S. Senator Jacob Javits and as a reporter for The Record, a newspaper in northern New Jersey. Hartz then attended Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1972 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude. Career Prior to his appointment to the Tenth Circuit, Hartz had a record of experience both in public service and private practice. He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico from 1972 to 1975, and thereafter spent a year as an assistant professor of law at University of Illinois College of Law in Champagne, Illinois. He served on the Governor of New Mexico's Organized Crime Prevention Commission from 1976–1979, first as counsel, then as executive director. After that, he was in private practice for nine years before serving as a judge and Chief Judge on the New Mexico Court of Appeals from 1988–1999, during which time he authored approximately 300 opinions. He then returned to private practice at a law firm, serving as Special Counsel to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, where he worked with the union to develop a code of conduct and an internal system for compliance and enforcement. Other service Hartz has been active in the American Law Institute since 1993 and has served as an Adviser for the Restatement of the Law (Third) Agency. He has also been a member of the American Bar Association's Appellate Practice Committee of the Appellate Judges Conference and the Advisory Committee to ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He currently sits on the Board of Overseers of the Searle Civil Justice Institute, a program of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University School of Law. Federal judicial service Hartz was nominated