William Lockhart Garwood
William Lockhart Garwood (October 29, 1931 – July 14, 2011) was an American judge who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was born in Houston, Texas, and earned a BA from Princeton University in 1952 and an LLB from the University of Texas School of Law in 1955, graduating first in his class. After clerking for Fifth Circuit Judge John Robert Brown, he served three years as a U.S. Army JAG officer and then practiced law in Austin. In 1979, he was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Governor Bill Clements, becoming the first Republican on that court since Reconstruction; his Texas Supreme Court tenure ended in 1980, and he joked that he was “returned to private practice one year later by popular mandate.”
On September 17, 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Garwood to a new seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was confirmed by the Senate on October 21, 1981, and received his commission on October 26, 1981. He took senior status on January 23, 1997, but continued to work on cases nearly full-time until his death. Garwood wrote the court’s decision in United States v. Lopez (1993), which held that the Gun-Free School Zone Act exceeded Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause; the Supreme Court later affirmed the ruling, marking a landmark limit on federal power. He also wrote United States v. Emerson (2001), the Fifth Circuit’s first major ruling recognizing an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. Garwood died in Austin, Texas, on July 14, 2011, at age 79 from a heart attack.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:31 (CET).