Rya Zobel (1931 – 2026)

Their Story

Born Rya Solveig Weickert on December 18, 1931, in Zwickau, Germany, Judge Zobel survived Nazi Germany's rise, only to see Soviet soldiers arrest her father when she was 13—she never saw him again. Her mother spent years in Soviet prisons. Zobel and her brother escaped to the United States, where she mastered English while living on Long Island and enrolled at Radcliffe College after just two and a half years. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1956 and clerked for U.S. District Court Chief Judge George Clinton Sweeney for a decade, then practiced law in Boston, becoming the first female partner at the prestigious firm Goodwin, Procter & Hoar.\n\nNominated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, Judge Zobel was confirmed by the Senate on March 21, 1979, becoming the first woman appointed to the federal bench in all of New England. She served with distinction on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for 35 years before assuming senior status in 2014. From 1995 to 1999, she served as the first woman director of the Federal Judicial Center. In 2020, she became the first woman federal trial judge to receive the Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award, the highest honor for a federal judge. Her colleagues praised her as "the best trial judge in the District and one of the best in the nation of the past four decades." She took great pride presiding over naturalization ceremonies, and in 2021 received the Outstanding Americans by Choice award from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Judge Zobel died at her home in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on July 4, 2026, at age 94.