Patrick Borchers

Patrick Borchers
Personal details
Born	September 1961 (age 62–63) Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Alma mater	University of Notre Dame University of California, Davis

Life and career

Patrick J. Borchers was born In Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Boulder High School in Boulder Colorado in 1979. He is a United States lawyer, university administrator and politician. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, with a B.S. in Physics with Honors in 1983. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of California, Davis School of Law where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law clerk to the Hon. Anthony Kennedy from 1986-87 when Kennedy was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Kennedy was later elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan.

Borchers was a practicing lawyer in Sacramento, California. His most noteworthy case was Board of Supervisors v. Local Agency Formation Com., 3 Cal. 4th 903 (1992), in which he successfully represented before the California Supreme Court a citizens group attempting to form the new city of Citrus Heights, California. That case was responsible for several other successful efforts to create new cities in California.

Borchers is married to Judy Borchers, a 1987 graduate of the U.C. Davis School of Law, and is the father of five children. Borchers and his wife have been the attorney coaches for ten years for the Skutt Catholic High School mock trial team. The Skutt Catholic mock trial team has won the state championship in Nebraska the last four years and five of the last seven. In 2013, the Skutt High team finished 3rd out of 48 teams competing in the national championship held in Indianapolis, Indiana. This was the highest finish for a Nebraska team since the inaugural 1984 competition.

Academic career

He later moved to Albany, New York, where he became a Professor of Law and an Associate Dean of Albany Law School of Union University. In 1999, he was appointed Dean of Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska, serving until 2007. While Dean of the Creighton Law School, he founded the Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the Creighton Law School with a four million dollar gift from the Werner family. In 2008, the Institute and the Law School were ranked the 12th best such program in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

In 2007, he was appointed Vice President for Academic Affairs at Creighton, the Chief Academic Officer of the university. Under his leadership, Creighton University enrolled freshman classes of over 1,000 students for the first time in the history of the university.

He stepped down in 2013 and was appointed director of the Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at Creighton University. His academic specialities include private international law (conflict of laws), international arbitration and federal jurisdiction and procedure. He is the author, co-author or editor of seven books and approximately 60 law review articles.

Courts have recognized him as an expert in the conflict of laws. In Silver v. IMAX Corp., 110 Or. (3d) 425 (2012) the Ontario Court of Appeals, in a landmark case, certified a class action in a stock fraud case involving U.S. shareholders, based substantially on Borchers's expert opinion. The Ontario court found persuasive his opinion that a U.S. court would recognize a Canadian judgment in a class proceeding. In a U.S. case, Tolliver v. Naor, 115 F. Supp. 2d. 697 (E.D. La. 2000), a U.S. federal court adopted his opinion that a New York court would not apply its vehicle owner liability statute to an accident occurring in Louisiana. His works have been cited repeatedly by U.S. Courts of Appeal, including Licci v. Lebanese Canadian Bank, SAL (673 F.3d 952 (2d Cir. 2012), discussing whether the New York Courts had jurisdiction in a tort action brought by Israeli citizens against Hizballah, and Tuazon v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 433 F.3d 1163 (9th Cir. 2006), discussing whether a Washington State resident plaintiff could obtain jurisdiction over out-of-state tobacco companies. State high courts have also been influenced by his writings. In Arabie v. CITGO Petroleum Corp., 89 So. 3d 307 (La. 2012), the Louisiana Supreme Court cited his works in a question regarding application of punitive damages to a multistate case. In Baldwin v. Fischer-Smith, 315 S.W.3d 389 (Mo. App. 2010), the Missouri Court of Appeals quoted extensively from and followed his writings on jurisdiction in Internet libel cases. In P.V. v. Camp Jaycee, 197 N.J. 132 (2008), both the majority and dissenting opinions in the New Jersey Supreme Court cited his works in deciding whether to apply New Jersey's charitable immunity statutes to a case involve a sexual assault on a disabled adult at a camp in Pennsylvania. In ABN Amro Bank, N.V. v. MBIA, Inc., 17 N.Y.3d 308 (2013), Borchers and New York University law professor Arthur Miller filed an amicus brief on the willing side in a multibillion dollar dispute regarding the administrative approval of the split of MBIA's business in an effort to protect its municipal bond insurance writing capability. In State v. NV Sumatra Tobacco Trading Co., 403 S.W.3d 726 (2013) the Tennessee Supreme Court cited his works in a jurisdictional dispute regarding a tobacco re-seller. In Townsend v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 227 Ill. 2d 147 (2007), the Illinois Supreme Court adopted the approach to choice-of-law decisions that Borchers advocated in an article he published in the Maryland Law Review. In Sutherland v. Kennington Truck Serv., 454 Mich. 274 (1996), the Michigan Supreme Court relied heavily on Borchers's empirical study of over 800 conflicts decisions in deciding whether to apply an out-of-state statute of limitations. Our of more than 225,000 authors, the Social Science Research Network ranks Borchers's writing in the top 4% for download frequency.

He has also served as the Chair of the Conflict of Laws section of the Association of American Law Schools. He has taught summer courses at the McGill Faculty of Law and is fluent in French.

Political Involvement

He has three times been elected (in 2009, 2011 and 2013) to Douglas Country, Nebraska Sanitary Improve District #498, and he currently serves as chair. He was mentioned as a potential Republican nominee for the Senate seat held by the retiring Michael Johanns. Borchers, however, opted against running, and is supporting Shane Osborn. Borchers serves as the Douglas County chair of Osborn's Senate campaign.