Magistrate Judge Sidney I. Schenkier served as a Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago from October 30, 1998, until his retirement on April 30, 2020. He served as the Presiding Magistrate Judge from 2009 to 2012.
Judge Schenkier, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 27, 1955. He attended college at Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1976. He then attended Northwestern University School of Law, where he received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1979 and was selected to the Order of the Coif. Judge Schenkier clerked for one year for the Honorable Marvin E. Aspen of this Court and then worked for one year as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1981, Judge Schenkier joined the law firm of Jenner & Block in Chicago, where he practiced law until joining the court as a Magistrate Judge in 1998. During his years at Jenner & Block, Judge Schenkier worked on a wide variety of civil and criminal cases at the trial and appellate levels, including three cases in the United States Supreme Court and a
pro bono
capital triple-murder case in which he argued before the jury at the death phase.
As a Magistrate Judge, Judge Schenkier presided over thousands of cases and handled more than 2,000 settlement conferences. As the Presiding Magistrate Judge, Judge Schenkier expanded the Settlement Assistance Program established by his esteemed colleague, Judge Morton Denlow, to include prisoner civil rights cases. In addition, Judge Schenkier served for nearly 21 years as a member of the Court’s Rules Committee, and for ten years as a member of the James B. Moran Second Chance Program, which was established in 2010 to assist persons re-entering society after serving federal prison sentences in overcoming the challenges that lead too many people back to prison. Working with those individuals as they strove to succeed in their "second chance" was one of Judge Schenkier’s most rewarding experiences as a judge.
Judge Schenkier was heavily involved in many law-related activities outside the courthouse. He was a board member and officer of the Federal Magistrate Judge Association (“FMJA”) from 2003 to 2015, an association of Magistrate Judges throughout the country. Judge Schenkier served as its President from 2013 to 2014 and had the privilege as President to successfully oversee litigation filed by the FMJA to restore cost of living increases that in many years had been wrongfully denied to Magistrate Judges. For his service to the FMJA and the Magistrate Judges across the country, the FMJA honored him with the Founders Award in 2016.
Judge Schenkier also served as an Adjunct Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law in trial practice and civil discovery and was a frequent speaker for bar organizations on e-discovery, settlement, and intellectual property matters. In 2019, he received from the Intellectual Property Association of Chicago the Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2015, Judge Schenkier was appointed by United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to serve on the Magistrate Judge Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, a position he held until his retirement from the bench in 2020.
After his retirement from the court in 2020, Judge Schenkier joined JAMS, where he handles a wide variety of matters as a private mediator and arbitrator. Judge Schenkier and his wife, Bess, were married in 1975 and have three adult children and 14 grandchildren.
