Paul J. De Muniz is a former Oregon appellate judge having served for more than 22 years on the bench including as chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court and the administrative head of the Oregon Judicial Branch from January 2006 to May 2012, retiring from the Supreme Court at the end of 2012. De Muniz graduated from Portland State University in 1972. De Muniz graduated from Portland State University in 1972 and Willamette University College of Law in 1975. He is a Vietnam war veteran. During his judicial career De Muniz wrote and spoke to both national and international audiences on the importance of maintaining independent state judiciaries, improving state court administration and the need for adequate state court funding. He has served as the 2009 Robert H. Jackson Lecturer for the National Judicial College and, in 2010, addressed judicial leaders from fifty-five countries at the Asian Pacific Courts Conference on the ways and means of judicial branch strategic planning. Later that year, De Muniz gave the 17th annual Justice William Brennan Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice at New York University Law School, discussing the need for reengineering state court operations. In 2013 De Muniz addressed the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on the subject of evaluating eyewitness identification evidence in court. De Muniz currently teaches at Willamette University College of Law as a Distinguished Jurist in Residence.
