Royce Lamberth

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Royce C. Lamberth (born 1943) is a federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Lamberth was born in 1943 in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas and from the University of Texas School of Law, receiving an LL.B. in 1967. He served as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army from 1968 to 1974, including one year in Vietnam. After that, he became an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1978, Lamberth became Chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a position he held until his appointment to the federal bench.

He was nominated to the federal bench on March 19, 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and confirmed by the Senate on November 13, 1987. He also served as Presiding Judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002.

Lamberth is known for presiding over a case, Cobell v. Kempthorne in which a group of American Indians sued the U.S. Department of the Interior for allegedly mismanaging a trust intended for their benefit. ^[1]

In May 2003, in a case brought by the families of the 241 servicemen who were killed in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, Lamberth declared that the Islamic Republic of Iran was responsible for the 1983 attack. Lamberth concluded that Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government, was completely reliant on Iran in 1983, and assisted Iranian Ministry of Information and Security agents in carrying out the operation. On September 7, 2007, Judge Lamberth ordered that Iran pay USD$2.65 billion to the families of the 241 U.S. servicepersons killed in the bombing. ^[2]

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