Claudia Wilken ’75 has been named chief judge of California’s Northern District. Wilken also served as a Federal Public Defender’s Office staff attorney, a private-practice lawyer in Berkeley, and a federal magistrate judge in the Northern District before joining the U.S. District Court bench in 1993. Some of her major decisions have included limiting but upholding San Francisco’s domestic partners law, overturning California’s term-limits law, and allowing lawsuits against school officials for ignoring sexual harassment against students. A former Berkeley Law lecturer, Wilken will remain in the court’s Oakland division.