Hon. Michael A. Wolff

MICHAEL A. WOLFF, who was appointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri in 1998, will serve a term as Chief Justice from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2007.

Prior to his 1998 appointment, Wolff served on the faculty of St. Louis University School of Law for 23 years. He taught Civil Procedure, Trial Advocacy, Criminal Sentencing, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Health Law, and Legislation, among other courses. He was a recipient of the law school's Teaching Excellence Award. Wolff also was on the faculty of the university's School of Medicine and School of Public Health. Wolff was active in trial practice and was co-author of Federal Practice and Instructions. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

Wolff serves on the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission and has been its chair in 2004 and 2005.

Wolff was a federal court law clerk and served in legal services programs in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Denver, Colorado, and was director of Black Hills Legal Services in Rapid City, South Dakota, from 1973 to 1975 before joining the St. Louis University faculty in 1975. He was transition director for Governor-elect Mel Carnahan in 1992, served as chief counsel to the Governor in 1993-1994, and was special counsel to the Governor from 1994-1998.

Chief Justice Wolff was born April 1, 1945. He graduated in 1967 from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, where he was editor-in-chief and chairman of the board of The Dartmouth, the student daily newspaper. He received his law degree with honors from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1970. During law school, he worked as a reporter and copy editor for The Minneapolis Star. He and his wife, Patricia B. Wolff, M.D., who is a pediatrician, have two grown sons: Andrew Barrett Wolff, M.D., an orthopedic surgery resident at Yale, and Benjamin Barrett Wolff, a law student at the University of California, Berkeley.