”I presided over the first tobacco litigation for about 10 years,” he continued. “At my Senate hearing for elevation to the Court of Appeals, I conceded quite reluctantly that my language may not have been appropriate for a judicial opinion. I now wish to retract that concession and declare that it wasn’t harsh enough.”
Haddon Lee Sarokin was born in Perth Amboy, N.J., on Nov. 25, 1928, to Samuel and Reebe Sarokin. His father published small local newspapers and a state industrial directory, and his mother worked for the newspapers.
He graduated from Dartmouth College and, in 1953, from Harvard Law School. He was a lawyer for Union County, N.J., in the 1960s but was primarily in private practice until, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, he joined the federal court in Newark in 1979.
His nomination to the Court of Appeals in 1994, by President Bill Clinton, had a tough time in the Senate, with Republicans accusing him of being an irresponsible, soft-on-crime liberal, but it was ultimately approved. Those criticisms surfaced again in 1996, when Judge Sarokin was among several judges who became campaign fodder for Republicans when Mr. Clinton ran for a second term.
He announced that June that he was resigning from the bench. “I see my life’s work and reputation being disparaged on an almost daily basis,” he said at the time, “and I find myself unable to ignore it.”
He denied judicial colleagues’ speculation that his decision was also related to their rejection of what a court administrator called his “extremely unusual” request that he be allowed to move to California, where his children and grandchildren lived, and to commute to the Philadelphia court as needed.
Settling in the San Diego area, Judge Sarokin became a private mediator and arbitrator and wrote commentary on legal and political matters for his own blog and later for HuffPost. He also wrote several plays, staged by a local repertory theater. which addressed issues of social justice and civil rights.
