Education

J.D., Harvard University, 1952
B.A., Harvard College, 1949

Judge Ludwig is a Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, having taken senior status in 1997. He began the practice of law as a Judge Advocate General and, thereafter, practiced for thirteen years with two law firms before being appointed to the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County by Governor Raymond Shafer in 1968. Twice elected thereafter to that post, he served as Administrative Judge of both the Juvenile Court and Family Court before being appointed to the Federal Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

Throughout his distinguished career, he has held a variety of leadership posts within the judiciary, including President of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges, Administrative Judge of the Bucks County Juvenile Court and Family Court, Chair of the Public Interest Committee of the Eastern District Court, Co-Chair of the Third Circuit Task Force on Counsel for Indigent Litigants in Civil Cases, and a Vice President of the Federal Judges Association. He has a long and distinguished record of service to the profession and to the community, including service as a founder and Chair of the Youth Services Agency of Bucks County, Vice Chair of the Pennsylvania Mental Health Law Task Force Advisory Committee, Chair of the Juvenile Justice Alliance of the Citizens Crime Commission, Executive Committee member of the Bucks County Inns of Court, and Member of the American Law Institute. He was the principal drafter of the PA Mental Health Procedures Act of 1976, which became a national model for commitment statutes.

For his public service and commitment to pro bono, Judge Ludwig has received many awards over the past three decades, including most recently the Justice William J. Brennan Distinguished Jurist Award and the Public Interest Section Pro Bono Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Distinguished Jurist Award from the John Peter Zenger Society, and a Lifetime Humanitarian Award from the Central Bucks County Chamber of Commerce. He was has been a lecturer in law at both Temple and Villanova Law Schools, and was a clinical associate professor at Hahnemann University. He has been a frequent speaker at state and national pro bono conferences, and he has written on pro bono and alternative dispute resolution.

Judge Ludwig was appointed a Wasserstein Public Interest Law Fellow at Harvard Law School for 1996-97, where he advised students on pro bono and careers in public interest law. He will continue to provide that service at Drexel Law; he will also assist in the development of the law school's pro bono program and help to engage students in interactions with the judiciary and leading practitioners.