J. Dean Morgan has passed away at age 79 following a battle with Parkinson’s disease. Morgan was born in 1942 in Berkeley, California. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and his law degree from the University of California-Hastings College of Law in 1968. Following law school, he moved to Seattle and worked for the law firm Hauger Gravy Schubert.
In 1972, Morgan moved to Vancouver and created the county public defender’s office, where he worked as a public defender. He served as a Superior Court judge in 1975, filling an open seat. In 1976, he was appointed to the Superior Court bench, serving until 1990. Morgan was later appointed to the state Court of Appeals, Division II in Tacoma, Washington and retired from appellate court in 2005. He was elected to ALI in 2004.
“Dean was a judge’s judge. As an appellate judge, he believed that his opinions were only good if they provided lawyers with a detailed analysis that they could apply to their own cases,” his obituary reads.
Morgan had also become an expert on evidence after joining the Superior Court bench and taught it as an adjunct professor of law at Seattle University School of Law and Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland. He was also on the faculty of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nev., where he taught judges from around the nation, and at the Washington State Judicial College.
He was recognized as a leader in judicial education, earning the Board of Judicial Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.