Active Judge: December 2, l983 to January 30, 2004
Nan R. Shuker was born in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1945. She received her B.A. degree from Harpur College, State University of New York at Binghamton, in 1966, and her J.D. degree from The American University, Washington College of Law, in 1969. After graduation, Judge Shuker worked at The American University Center for the Administration of Justice. She left to join the Office of the Corporation Counsel in 1972. Judge Shuker worked in the Juvenile Section of the Office of the Corporation Counsel between 1972 and 1983, rising to the position of Section Chief. As Section Chief, she was responsible for the prosecution of all juvenile delinquency cases as well as child abuse and neglect cases and domestic violence matters. She held this position until her appointment to the Bench.
Judge Shuker was invested as an Associate Judge on December 2, 1983. She has served in all three major divisions of the Court—Criminal, Civil, and Family. From 1990-1993, she was appointed Deputy Presiding Judge of the Civil Division, and served as Presiding Judge of the Civil Division from 1993-1996. While Presiding Judge, she assisted in the development of the mandatory ADR program currently in operation in the Civil Division. Throughout her tenure on the Bench, Judge Shuker adjudicated and mediated numerous cases in such areas as complex torts (product liability and medical malpractice), commercial contracts, land disputes, trusts and estates, domestic relations, employment discrimination, and sexual harassment. In subsequent years, these mediation topics have expanded to include additional types of commercial litigation and complex domestic relations cases.
Judge Shuker retired as an active judge on January 30, 2004. For the four years prior to her retirement, she served as the Adoptions Judge and as a neglect and domestic relations calendar judge in the Family Court. During this period, she was the Chair of the Neglect and Adoption Sub-Committee of the Implementation Committee, the Adoptions/Guardianship Rules Committee and a member of the Family Court Drug Treatment Court Task Force. When the Family Court Act was being considered by Congress, she served in an advisory capacity to the Chief Judge and Presiding Judges in drafting comments to the Congressional Committee on the Act and writing the Court’s Transitional Plan, which was required to be submitted to Congress by the newly enacted law.
Judge Shuker has been active in legal and community affairs, and has taught and lectured at local law schools, colleges, and public schools, and to young attorneys in the Public Defender Service, United States Attorney’s Office, and the Office of the Corporation Counsel. She has served on the teaching faculty of the National Judicial College and the Harvard University Law School Trial Advocacy Program.
She serves as the Chairperson of the Scholarship Subcommittee of the Robert A. Shuker Scholarship Fund, and is a member of the Board of Directors of AHEAD (Adventures in Health, Education & Agricultural Development) which provides assistance to underserved communities in the United States and Africa. She has also been a participant in the “shadowing” program with Coolidge High School’s chapter of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice.
In April, 1993, at the invitation of the Government of Tanzania, Judge Shuker traveled to Tanzania where she was a guest speaker at a seminar on “Management Development for Judges.” Since that time, she has assisted the Government of Tanzania in the development and adoption of the Individual Calendar and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Court System which is similar to the system used by the Civil Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Her work with the judiciary of Tanzania was instrumental in the establishment of the Robert A. Shuker U.S./Africa Judicial Exchange Program under a grant from the United States Information Agency in late 1994. This exchange program was a collaborative multi-institutional international exchange program for African judges from the countries of Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Uganda. From 1996 to the present, Judge Shuker has participated in the training of members of the judiciary and law societies of Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Romania, and Slovenia in the techniques of mediation and caseflow management. She also served as the judicial member of a mediation training team which conducted settlement weeks in the Resident Magistrates’ Court and the High Courts of Tanzania and Zambia and conducted caseflow management assessments of the Resident Magistrates’ Court and the High Courts of Tanzania and Ghana and the courts of Bangladesh.