Commencement 2009
Valerie E. Caproni
Commencement Speaker
In August 2003, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller appointed Valerie Caproni General Counsel of the FBI. In that position she is chief Legal Counsel to the Director. On behalf of the Bureau she supervises legal matters involving law enforcement and national security and the defense of civil and administrative claims brought against the FBI and its employees. Her previous work experience spanned both the private and the public sectors: She has worked for two prestigious New York firms, Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and held appointments in various high-level offices of the federal government and the state of New York. She was an Assistant US Attorney in the Criminal Division of the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern Division of New York and General Counsel of the NY State Urban Development Corporation before returning to the US Attorney’s Office in New York, where she was, first, Chief of Special Prosecutions, Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and, afterwards, Chief of the Criminal Division. Later, she accepted an appointment as Director of the Pacific Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ms. Caproni is a1976 magna cum laude graduate of Newcomb College of Tulane University and a 1979 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law.
This is her third visit to our law school. In 2005, she participated in a Cleveland-Marshal forum on The Proposed Federal Law to Create a Reporter/Source Privilege; in March of this year, she participated in the law school’s Future of Forensics Symposium.
The law school will grant honorary doctorates during our 2009 commencement ceremony to the Honorable Jean Murrell Capers and Mr. James A. Thomas.
The Honorable Jean Murrell Capers, Class of 1945
The Honorable Jean Murrell Capers was born in Georgetown, Kentucky. Her father moved his family to Cleveland when she was a child so that his children could attend integrated schools. She graduated from Flora Mather Stone College, the women’s college of Western Reserve University, in 1933 and taught elementary school children in the Cleveland Public Schools.
As a member of Cleveland’s early civil rights organization, the Future Outlook League, Jean Murrell Capers participated in pickets and organized boycotts of companies and clubs that would not hire or admit African Americans during the 1930s and 40s. And sometime in the 1940s, she decided she had something to say, not just to Cleveland school children, but to the city and the world—something about being a black American and a citizen—and that she needed to be a lawyer to say it. Or, as she told an interviewer, “I did not go to law school so I could have a job. I went to law school so I could be of broader service to people.” She graduated from our predecessor law school, the Cleveland Law School, in 1945. Following her law school graduation she served as an Assistant Police Prosecutor; in 1949 she became the first woman of color ever elected to the Cleveland City Council, where she remained for three terms. From 1960 until 1962 she served as an Ohio Assistant Attorney General; in 1977 Governor James Rhodes appointed her to the Cleveland Municipal Court. She was subsequently elected and remained on the bench until 1986. She has held memberships in the National Bar Association, the NAACP, the Urban League, the National Association of Black Women Lawyers, the Council on Human Relations and many other political organizations. And in 1999, at age 86, she ran as an independent candidate for the U.S. Congress. In January 2010, Judge Capers will celebrate her 97th birthday.
James A. Thomas, Class of 1963
James A. Thomas was born in Pembroke, North Carolina, attended high school in Cleveland, and earned his undergraduate degree in economics with honors from Baldwin-Wallace College. He earned his JD in 1963, magna cum laude, from our law school. He is the founder, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Properties Group, Inc., a national real estate developer of properties throughout the United States.
Before founding Thomas Properties in 2004, he was a partner in two prominent Los Angeles law firms, served in the Regional Counsel’s Office of the Internal Revenue Service and was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of TPG, a predecessor to Thomas Properties. Mr. Thomas was Chief Executive Officer and principal owner of the Sacramento Kings NBA Basketball team and the ARCO Arena from 1992 to 1999.
Mr. Thomas has served the greater Los Angeles community conscientiously throughout his career. He has been a chair and member of the boards of a number of local and national civic and cultural organizations, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, St. John’s Health Center Foundation in Santa Monica, the Music Center of Los Angeles County and the I Have a Dream Foundation. A pioneer in sustainable real estate, Thomas Properties Group has received a numerous awards for its leadership in sustainability building.
Mr. Thomas was the founding chair of the law school’s National Advisory Council and is now co-chair of Cleveland-Marshall’s Fund for Excellence committee. His generous support created the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professorship in 2003 and, more recently, helped the law school create its largest scholarship fund through his $50,000 donation to the Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Scholarship Fund.