Former Pennsylvania First Lady Midge Rendell Takes On New Role

January 31, 2015 11:31 AM

(Judge Marjorie Rendell, at the National Constitution Center, during a break in a schoolteachers forum on the First Amendment. Photo by Pat Loeb)

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By Pat Loeb

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Pennsylvanias former First Lady, Judge Marjorie Rendell, is giving up her full-time seat on the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals but shes hardly retiring.

Judge Rendell says she may be able to have a greater impact in her new role. Shell be a senior judge, with 80 percent of a full-time caseload, and shell be doing more work at the Rendell Center for Citizenship and Civics, an outgrowth of her focus as First Lady. She started the center just over a year ago with her husband, former governor Ed Rendell, from whom she is separated. Its currently piloting a fourth-grade civics curriculum and working with Annenberg on high school civics and a project on judicial independence.

Im looking forward to working with Annenberg to have impact, Rendell says. In fact, Im wondering whether that aspect of my life might have more impact than even what Ive been doing so far.

But giving up her seat now assures that President Obama will appoint her successor, a factor that she says figured into the timing of her decision.

Hes done a pretty good job, Rendell says. Were very fortunate that we have three new judges that Obama has picked, and our senators have been fabulous in agreeing on the nominees, because that can be an issue. So Im hopeful that my successor would be chosen fairly promptly.

Rendell will lose her vote on en banc cases, but she says shell still have a voice on the court where she served for 21 years.

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Former Pennsylvania First Lady Midge Rendell Takes On New Role