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Judge S. Jay Plager (JD 58)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit
Some remember him as a young
professor at UF, where he began
teaching fresh out of law school in 1958.
That was a few years after Sheldon Jay
Plager took part in the Korean conflict
as a Navy ensign—and a few decades
before his 1989 appointment to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit.
“Essentially, I had three careers
before becoming a judge,” Plager
said. “Originally, I wanted to be a
Navy admiral, but thatʼs not a familyfriendly
job, so I went landside to
become a trial lawyer. UF prepared me
well to practice and then preempted
my plans.”
Plager embarked on a 30-year
career as a legal scholar, focusing
on property and environmental law,
with teaching stints first at UF, the
University of Illinois, and then
a deanship at Indiana University
School of Law in Bloomington. His
numerous publications include a
book about Florida water law that he
co-authored with UF Law Professor
Fletcher Baldwin and then-UF Dean
Frank Maloney.
Along the way he spent time at
Columbia University, the University
of Wisconsin, Stanford University,
and Cambridge University in England.
Somehow, Plager managed to stay
active in the U.S. Navy Reserves, from
which he was honorably discharged as
a commander in 1971.
“I never could keep the same job
very long, so I had to get used to new
challenges. Of all the careers I thought
about, becoming a judge, particularly
on a federal court of appeals, was not
one of them,” Plager said. “It was
purely serendipitous—being at the
right place at the right time.”
The “right place” was the Executive
Office of the President of the United
States, through positions at the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) under
presidents Ronald Reagan and George
H. W. Bush. In one of two positions he
held at OMB, Plagerʼs office oversaw
about half a trillion dollars a year in
federal spending.
“For someone who struggles to
balance his checkbook, that was a real
challenge,” said Plager.
“Typically, there are two routes to
a federal court appointment,” Plager
said. “One is to be politically active.
The other is to come to the attention
of the president in some other way.
In my case, during the time I worked
at OMB I worked closely with the
presidentʼs legal staff, and in addition
assisted then-Vice President Bush in
his regulatory review role. When he
became president, I was asked to stay
on to help get through the transition,
and then I guess they had to find
something else for me to do. A federal
court appointment is one of those offers
you canʼt refuse.”
Even his stints at the OMB came
about serendipitously. President Reagan
chose Indianaʼs former governor,
Otis “Doc” Bowen, as secretary of
Health and Human Services (HHS).
Bowen needed staff that understood
Washington. Plager was just retiring
after seven years as dean of the
Indiana Law School. Having worked
in the regulatory field for years, and
having served as an adviser to the U.S.
Environment Protection Agency, Plager
fit the bill to become counselor to the
under-secretary of HHS.
“At HHS, I regularly negotiated
with the White House staff on behalf
of the secretary,” Plager said. “I was
older than most of them, which seemed
to give me an advantage. During the
Reagan era, White House staff were
not always enamored of HHSʼs social
programs, but I was pretty relentless
and had some success pushing the HHS
secretaryʼs program. After awhile, the
OMB guys said, ʻHey, why donʼt you
come work for us.ʼ That sounded like
fun, so I did.”
“I still refer back to basics I
learned in my first year of law school,
and I can still hear my first
year law professors.”
During his years on the bench,
Plager has seen considerable change,
not only in the cases, but in the way
judges work.
“The technology is amazing,” he said.
“I can work at home and still have access
to my office files, and work by computer
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