Joseph M. McLaughlin

Joseph Michael McLaughlin (born 1933) is a federal appellate judge in the United States.

McLaughlin obtained his bachelors and law degrees from Fordham University; he obtained an LL.M. from the New York University School of Law and was awarded the LL.D. degree by Mercy College and Fordham University. After service in the U.S. Army, where he was a Captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and two years in private legal practice, McLaughlin worked as a law professor at Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan from 1961 to 1971. In 1971, McLaughlin became Dean of Fordham Law School, a position he held for ten years.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed McLaughlin as a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, headquartered in Brooklyn. After McLaughlin spent nine years as a District Judge, in 1990, President George H.W. Bush promoted him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. McLaughlin assumed senior status on the Second Circuit in 1998, but continues to hear cases.

In addition to serving as a judge, since 1982, McLaughlin has been an adjunct law professor at St. John's University School of Law and Fordham University School of Law. His publications include numerous works on the law of evidence and civil procedure. Judge McLaughlin is the co-author of Peterfreund and McLaughlin, Cases and Methods on New York Practice. He is the author of Practice Commentaries for McKinney's New York CPLR and the PLI Monograph on Evidence. He is also the editor-in-chief of Federal Practice Guide (Matthew Bender), and of Weinstein’s Evidence (Matthew Bender).