Tinder joins the big leagues with seat on 7th Circuit

Tinder had served for three years as U.S. attorney when Reagan nominated him to the federal bench. The U.S. Senate unanimously approved his nomination to the federal district court in August 1987.

He said he was fascinated by the variety of cases he dealt with in his two decades as a federal trial judge.

“Everything from minor slip-and-falls at Wal-Marts to complex patent cases and everything in between. Antitrust, fraud, contract disputes, international child abduction cases — there’s no end to the variety,” Tinder said. “You can easily get tired in the job of being a federal trial judge, but you’re never bored.”

Included among those cases is the 2006 trial of Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban, an Indiana truck driver who was convicted in an Iraqi spy conspiracy case. Tinder sentenced him to more than 13 years in prison and the loss of his U.S. citizenship after a jury found him guilty of a half-dozen charges — including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, procurement of citizenship by fraud, and tampering with a witness — but deadlocked on the charge that he tried to sell the names of U.S. covert operatives to Saddam Hussein’s government in late 2002.

In another case, in 2004, Tinder struck down Indiana’s curfew law, finding that it unconstitutionally infringed on parental rights; and in 1990 he ruled in favor of two Pennsylvania trash-hauling firms, finding that portions of an Indiana law that discouraged the import of out-of-state trash were unconstitutional.

One of the things he’ll miss about being a trial judge is the interaction with juries.

“That has been a very affirming experience to realize how seriously jurors take their work, and what a wealth of experiences they have and just good common sense,” Tinder said. “These are real people deciding really important issues, and they do a wonderful job of it.”

So far, Tinder said, he is enjoying his new judicial post.

“It’s a collegial court in that judges act as a group, and it’s also collegial in the other sense of the term, in that the judges seem to have great regard and affection for each other,” Tinder said. “The approach to the work is very deliberate and thoughtful, and it seems to be a very comfortable and intellectually stimulating and energizing environment in which to work.”

When asked to describe his judicial philosophy, he said he would rather let his work speak for itself.

“There’s a body of work out there that I have done over the 20 years. Take a look at those cases and derive for yourself where you think I fit on whatever spectrum you want to use,” he said. “I don’t come into any particular case with an expectation that this side or that side should win. Every case plays out on its own merits. I didn’t come into this part of the business to steer cases to particular outcomes. I think that the facts and the law will lead the case to where it belongs.”

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