The Kansas Supreme Court will meet in special session at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, to swear in Judge Caleb Stegall to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the departure of Justice Nancy Moritz to serve on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Chief Justice Lawton R. Nuss will preside at the ceremony.
Stegall will be presented to the Supreme Court by Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Rask and U.S. District Court Judge Eric Melgren.
The public may watch a live webcast of the ceremony by following the Watch Supreme Court Live! link in the right-hand column of the Kansas Judicial Branch website at www.kscourts.org.
Following his nomination by the Supreme Court Nominating Commission, Stegall was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor Sam Brownback on August 29. Stegall currently is a member of the Kansas Court of Appeals.
Stegall earned his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law, where he served on the Kansas Law Review; was awarded the William L. Burdick Prize, given to the top student in his or her class; and graduated Order of the Coif.
Upon his admission to the bar in 2000, Stegall served as a law clerk to Judge Deanell R. Tacha, chief judge of the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. He then joined the Topeka office of the Foulston Siefkin law firm, where he practiced in the areas of commercial, tort and appellate litigation.
In 2005, he formed the law firm Stegall and Associates in Perry, Kan., which he managed until joining the Brownback administration in 2011. Recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top firms in Kansas, Stegall and Associates specialized in complex constitutional and commercial litigation.
During this period, Stegall handled a variety of highly visible matters of significant public concern, including successfully representing a number of American missionaries who were charged with serious crimes in Haiti following that country’s devastating earthquake in 2010. For his work on behalf of the missionaries, Stegall was awarded the Kansas Bar Association’s 2010 Pro Bono Certificate.
Additionally, from 2009 to 2011, Stegall served as the elected county attorney of Jefferson County, Kan. As the lead prosecutor and chief law enforcement official of Jefferson County, Stegall oversaw a full-time staff that managed a yearly caseload of hundreds of felonies and misdemeanors. Stegall personally handled the most serious of these, including prosecuting cases of murder, rape, crimes against children, drug manufacture and distribution, and white collar financial crimes.
Stegall grew up in the Douglas County, Kan., area. His father is a retired community corrections chief of Douglas County, and his mother retired as a science teacher at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kan..
Stegall and his wife, Ann, have been married for 20 years. They have five children—Simon, Jacob, Ethan, Theodore and Quentin. They are members of Grace Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lawrence.