Russell F. Canan

Judge Russell F. Canan was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1993 by President William Jefferson Clinton. Currently, Judge Canan is a Senior Judge on the Court. He has served in all divisions of the Court—Criminal, Civil, Family and Probate.

Judge Canan served as the Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division. He is the former Chair of the Committee on Wrongful Convictions, the Judicial Education Committee, the Jury Management Committee, and the Committee on the Selection and Tenure of Magistrate Judges.

Judge Canan is the co-editor and co-author of Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They’ve Ever Made, (Canan, Mize, and Weisberg, The New Press) and is the author of Pursuing the Horizon: Stories of Justice (Twelve Tables.)

Judge Canan is an adjunct professor at the George Washington Law School and teaches Judicial Lawyering and Anatomy of a Homicide.