Miles Lord, a federal judge whose 20 years on the bench in Minnesota helped shape state and national social policies, has died. He was 97.

After serving as Minnesota’s attorney general and the U.S. attorney for the state, Lord was appointed to the bench by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. There, Lord forged rulings that were noted — and often controversial — across the country, from environmental law to gender equity. In reaction to his death, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar called him “a pivotal judge” and “a legend,” while those who worked under him described him as a champion of the underdog — a quality he often used to describe himself.

MAJOR CASES

Lord’s most notable case may have been United States v. Reserve Mining, filed in 1972. It culminated with his ordering Reserve Mining Company to shut down its plant — an unprecedented move at the time — to stop dumping its taconite tailings into Lake Superior. The case ushered in the idea that the government could collar how much industry could pollute.

Lord was removed from the case by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1976, with the appeals panel writing that Lord “seems to have shed the robe of the judge and assumed the mantle of the advocate” and exhibited “gross bias” against Reserve in his actions from the bench. Related Articles To mask or not to mask at MN polling places. Judge hears arguments.

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Lord also oversaw the 14,000-plaintiff class action litigation filed against the maker of Dalkon Shield, an IUD form of contraception that resulted in 18 deaths and some 350,000 claimed injuries. The manufacturer, A.H. Robins Company, eventually paid over $233 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The case also led to the 1976 enactment of the Medical Device Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which required the FDA to test and approve medical devices.

In 1972, Lord ruled in favor of two girls who had sued the Minnesota State High School League for the right to compete on boys’ teams, since girls’ teams did not exist at the time. Title IX, which created sports teams for girls and women at high schools and colleges, among other things, would not be enacted for another two months. He later told the Duluth News Tribune that the ruling was his proudest.

“That has done more to change the lives of more young women than anything else I’ve done,” he said in 1991.

In 1980, he ruled in favor of Shyamala Rajender, an assistant chemistry professor who had been denied a tenure-track position at the University of Minnesota despite being recommended by several committees. After Rajender and the U settled following 11 weeks of trial, Lord ordered the U to stop discriminating against women on the basis of gender.

Lord was tied to the establishment of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness as we know it today. In 1975, he ruled that virgin forests in the area could not be logged. The ruled was reversed on appeal the next year. In July 1980, Lord dismissed three lawsuits — including one filed by the state of Minnesota — challenging the constitutionality of the 1978 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act. That legislation, among other actions, banned motors from all but a few waters within the BWCAW.

‘DIRECT WAY TO JUSTICE’

Lord was a polarizing jurist. In 1980, American Lawyer magazine named Lord one of America’s 11 worst federal judges; in 1981, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America picked him as its outstanding federal trial judge of the year.

“He was a very unusual judge in that he cared about doing the right thing in a manner that was the most direct way to justice,” said Roberta Walburn, a prominent Minneapolis attorney who worked as a law clerk for Lord in 1983 and ’84. “He used the law as a means to an end. He put justice ahead of judicial decorum.”

In approving the Dalkon Shield settlement in 1984, Lord ordered the company’s three top executives to appear in the courtroom and dressed them down in a lecture that Walburn said “today would have gone viral.”

Lord said to the three men, in part: “Under your direction, your company has, in fact, continued to allow women, tens of thousands of them, to wear a device — a deadly depth charge in their wombs, ready to explode at any time … you have taken the bottom line as your guiding beacon and the low road as your route. This is corporate irresponsibility at its meanest.”

Lord retired in 1985 and opened Lord & Associates, a Minneapolis personal injury law firm, with his son, Jim. Another son, Miles Jr., managed the office, and his eldest daughter, Priscilla Lord Faris, now runs the firm.

One of nine children, Lord grew up poor on the Iron Range. He met his wife Maxine in 1940. They went on to be married for 69 years, until her death in 2009, and had four children: Priscilla, who ran against Sen. Al Franken in 2008; Miles Jr., who died in 2012; Jim, a former state senator and treasurer who died in 2008; and Virginia, who is a real estate agent in Wayzata.

Lord worked as a welder and postal employee while getting his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1946 and 1948, respectively. He was the first in his family to earn a college degree.

FIGHTING BULLIES

His younger years on the Range were typified by street fights, and he later went on to fight in the state Golden Gloves boxing championship as a middleweight, losing in the finals.

“He would take on the town bullies — that typified him,” said Walburn, a senior attorney at Ciresi Conlin LLP. “He was born to take on bullies, and that defined his entire life.”

For his part, Lord embraced that narrative.

“I tried to put the spotlight on the big boys, the rich, the overprivileged,” he told the News Tribune in 1991, six years after he retired from the federal bench. “… They’re the guys with all the dough, the guys who try to break the plaintiff by making litigation long and expensive.”

Lord’s legacy goes beyond legal jurisprudence.

Walburn, who was the lead attorney representing Minnesota in the historic tobacco litigation that resulted in $6.6 billion in payments from major cigarette makers, said she never would have been a lawyer if it weren’t for Lord.

“Almost by happenstance I ended up getting the offer for the clerkship,” said Walburn, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune at the time. “You don’t turn down a clerkship with Judge Lord, so I did it. … He took his clerks under his wing. When I would goof something up he would blame it on himself even though it was clearly my fault. He was demanding but he was wonderful. He treated his clerks like family.”

It was his adept handling of the Dalkon Shield case — especially a procedural ruling “allowing the lawyers to go after the truth, that eventually led to the settlement” — that changed her perspective, she said.

“Seeing what the law could be, it changed my whole life.”

Andrew Krueger of the Forum News Service contributed to this report.