Howard Matz

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Judge Matz

Howard Matz (b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York) is a judge on the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Howard Matz was appointed a United States District Judge by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Matz taught police science and clerked for a United States District Judge before joining Hughes Hubbard's Los Angeles office in 1970. From 1974 to 1978, Matz served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, and in 1978 returned to Hughes Hubbard to join the Firm's partnership. On June 26, 1998, the Senate unanimously confirmed Judge Matz to be a United States District Judge for the Central District of California.

[edit] Famous rulings

After nearly four decades of experience in the law, Howard Matz found himself embroiled in international controversy over the treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray. Judge Matz presided over the first legal challenge to the United States Government's treatment of those prisoners, in a petition brought by a civil rights group seeking habeas corpus for 158 "detainees." Judge Matz dismissed the petition on the grounds that United States courts do not have jurisdiction over the Cuban base where detainees are held and that the petitioners lacked standing since they had no "significant relationship" with the prisoners. In his ruling, Judge Matz emphasized that "nothing in this ruling suggests that the captives are entitled to no legal protection whatsoever."
Judge Matz decided Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., a critical case on copyrights online. Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular search engine, and Amazon.com Inc. won a bid to dismiss Perfect 10's claim that the companies electronically circumvented the adult publisher's copyright-protection systems. U.S. District Judge Howard Matz dismissed the claim 07.23.2007 at a hearing in Los Angeles federal court, saying there was no basis to justify the allegation.
When it comes to Internet Technology, about 36 percent of Article III judges said that BlackBerry devices shouldn’t be used in their courtrooms at all. They cited several reasons, including concern about distracting jurors. Judge A. Howard Matz raised a more abstract concern during a hearing when he said that using BlackBerrys inhibited his efforts to “preserve something akin to the majesty of the law.” But 35 percent of the other Article III judges were OK with the devices, with no restrictions.