Hon. Samuel Thumma

Judge Samuel Thumma has served on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One since 2012, serving as Chief Judge for two years ending in 2019 and Vice Chief Judge for two years before that. Before being appointed to the Court of Appeals, he served as a Judge on the Arizona Superior Court, Maricopa County for nearly five years, presiding over criminal and juvenile matters (including nearly 250 trials) and serving as an elected member of the Judicial Executive Committee. Nationally, Judge Thumma is a Uniform Law Commissioner, where he is a member of the Scope & Program Committee, chairs the Drafting Committee on Updating the Uniform Determination of Death Act and is a member of the International Legal Developments Committee and the Committee to Monitor Developments in Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution. Previously, he chaired the Drafting Committee for the Uniform Employee and Student Online Protection and Privacy Act (2016). He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2003 and serves as an Adviser to the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He Chairs the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division Appellate Judges Conference and is an officer on the Appellate Judges Education Institute, Inc., Board of Directors. Judge Thumma also serves as Judicial Division Liaison to the ABA Section of Litigation. By appointment of the National Center for State Courts, he serves on the Joint Technology Committee, a cooperative effort of the NCSC, the Conference of State Court Administrators, and the National Association for Court Management.

In Arizona, Sam chairs the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice; co-chairs the COVID-19 Continuity of Court Operations During a Health Emergency Workgroup (the Plan B Workgroup) and is a member of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on Juvenile Courts. He was named the 2021 Judge of the Year by the Arizona Supreme Court. Previously, he served as co-chair of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on the Rules of Evidence (2012-2019) and chair of the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee (2017-2019). Sam also chaired the State Bar of Arizona’s Civil Practice and Procedure and Fee Arbitration Committees and served on the State Bar’s Civil Recommended Arizona Jury Instructions and Rules of Professional Conduct Committees.

Judge Thumma has taught remedies as an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University Colleges of Law and co-taught evidence to all new Arizona trial judges for many years. He is a frequent speaker and has presented at more than 400 seminars internationally, nationally and in Arizona. He is a frequent author, having published 13 law review articles and more than 50 other law-related articles. Before joining the bench, he was an AV peer review rated lawyer and a partner at Perkins Coie Brown & Bain, P.A., in Phoenix, and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. He served as a law clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley G. Feldman and Judge David R. Hansen, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. Sam received a Master of Laws from Duke University School of Law in 2020; graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1988, where he was a Note & Comment Editor on the Iowa Law Review, and graduated from Iowa State University in 1984, where he was a Harry S. Truman Memorial Scholar.