Summary:
Long before he became a federal judge, even before he went to law school in the
early 1970s, Michael Ponsor wrote fiction. It was not until 2013, however, that Judge Ponsor published his first novel, The Hanging Judge. In this podcast, Judge Ponsor discusses his passion for writing as well as his experiences as a lawyer and judge that inform his third published novel, Point of Order.
In his conversation with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Judge Ponsor discusses the demands and challenges of being a judge and how he presents them in his novels involving Judge David S. Norcross. Among other things, Judge Ponsor says, it is necessary for a judge to “rule and roll” in order to do the job. Judge Ponsor also talks about how his experience teaching in Kenya as a young man figures into Point of Order as well.
This podcast will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn more about the relationship between law and literature.
Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.
Learn more about Judge Michael Ponsor
Michael Ponsor is a New York Times best-selling novelist and a Senior United
States District Judge. He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College, went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and completed his law degree at Yale Law School. His law practice prior to his appointment to the bench specialized in criminal defense and civil trial work.
Judge Ponsor served as a United States Magistrate Judge from 1984 until his appointment in 1994 as a life-tenured United States District Judge by President Bill Clinton. His judicial career has encompassed a number of high-profile cases, including the first capital prosecution in Massachusetts in more than fifty years, United States v. Kristen Gilbert. At the conclusion of her five-month trial, Gilbert, a Veterans Administration nurse, was found guilty of murdering four of her patients. The jury declined to impose the death penalty, and Ponsor imposed a sentence upon Gilbert of four consecutive life terms.
Ponsor’s opinion pieces have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall St. Journal, and most recently in The New York Times (“A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells” Guest Essay, July 16, 2023; “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” Guest Essay, May 24, 2024).
In 2013, Open Road Media published Ponsor’s first novel, The Hanging Judge, a fictional account of a federal death penalty trial told from the viewpoint of a newly-appointed federal judge, David Norcross. Praised by The Washington Post as “a rarity . . . a story that grips the reader even as it teaches,” the book went on to be a New York Times bestseller. In 2017, Ponsor’s second Judge Norcross novel, The One-Eyed Judge, focused on the trial of an Amherst College English professor charged with possession of child pornography. Point of Order is Ponsor’s third novel featuring Judge Norcross.
Ponsor lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, novelist Nancy Coiner, and continues to work as a Senior United States District Judge in Springfield.
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