Samuel Thumma

Sam has served on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, since 2012, serving as Chief Judge for two years ending in 2019, and Vice Chief Judge for two years before that. Before being appointed to the Court of Appeals, Sam served as a Judge on the Arizona Superior Court, Maricopa County, for nearly five years, presiding over criminal and juvenile matters (including nearly 250 trials) and serving as an elected member of the Judicial Executive Committee.

Nationally, Sam has been a Uniform Law Commissioner from Arizona since 2012. Currently, he serves as secretary of the ULC and on the ULC Executive Committee; chairs the Drafting Committee on Updating the Uniform Determination of Death Act and serves as a member of the Committee to Monitor Developments in Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution. Sam has served on various Study, Drafting and other ULC Committees, including the Scope and Program Committee. He has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2003 and serves as an Adviser to the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Remedies. In the American Bar Association, Sam serves as a Presidential appointee to the Advisory Council of the ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence and the Standing Committee on Lawyer Referral and Information Services (2023-present), having previously served as a Presidential appointee to the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility Judges Advisory Committee. In 2022 and 2019, Sam served on ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Site Evaluation Teams addressing law school accreditation. He has served as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division Appellate Judges Conference and the Appellate Judges Education Institute, Inc., Board of Directors, as well as Judicial Division Liaison to the ABA Section of Litigation. Sam is a member of the National Judicial College Board of Trustees, serving on the Finance and Academic Committees. He has served as faculty for National Judicial College programs for more than five years, including on ethics, writing, evidence and judicial decision making. He is a member of the Joint Technology Committee, appointed by the National Center for State Courts and a member of the Editorial Board for Judicature.

In Arizona, Sam chairs the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice; co-chairs the Advisory Committee on Evidence Retention and is a member of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on Juvenile Courts. Sam has chaired various Committees, Commissions and Task Forces for the Arizona Supreme Court and the State Bar of Arizona, including serving as co-editor of the Arizona Appellate Handbook for many years. He also chaired the Task Force on Court Management of Digital Evidence and the Task Force to Supplement Keeping of the Record by Electronic Means. In 2023, he received the James A. Walsh Outstanding Jurist Award from the State Bar of Arizona and, in 2021, he was named the Judge of the Year by the Arizona Supreme Court.

Sam co-teaches Evidence at Arizona State University College of Law, having previously co-taught evidence to all new Arizona judges for many years. He has taught remedies at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University Colleges of Law and has judged moot court appellate advocacy competitions at various law schools. Sam is a frequent speaker, having presented at more than 500 seminars internationally, nationally and in Arizona. He also is a frequent author, having published 25 law review articles and book chapters and nearly 70 other law-related articles. Before joining the bench, Sam was an AV peer review rated lawyer and a partner at Perkins Coie Brown & Bain, P.A., in Phoenix, and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. He served as a law clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley G. Feldman and Judge David R. Hansen, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. Sam received a Master of Laws from Duke University School of Law in 2020; graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1988, where he was a Note & Comment Editor on the Iowa Law Review, and graduated from Iowa State University in 1984, where he was a Harry S. Truman Memorial Scholar.