Hon. Melody Stewart

Elected to the Ohio Court of Appeals – Eighth Appellate District in 2006 and twice reelected, Judge Melody Stewart has over 30 years of combined administrative, legal, and academic experience in a number of private and public settings.  She has been an administrator for a healthcare management company, a music teacher, a civil defense litigator, and a law school administrator and professor.  She served as the Administrative Judge for the Court of Appeals in 2013.

Judge Stewart earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati; her law degree as a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University; and her Ph.D. as a Mandel Leadership Fellow at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.   

After practicing law as an assistant law director for the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, Judge Stewart worked as a lecturer, an adjunct instructor, and an assistant dean at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law before joining the faculty.  Her primary teaching areas were ethics and professional responsibility, criminal law, criminal procedure, and legal research, writing, and advocacy.  Additionally, she taught at the University of Toledo College of Law, at Ursuline College, and was Director of Student Services at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law.

Judge Stewart has served on many boards of trustees and been a member of various professional, educational, civic, and community organizations.  She also served as a commissioner and chair of the Board of Planning and Zoning for the city of Euclid.  Recently Judge Stewart served as a member of the Ohio Criminal Justice Recodification Committee.  She is currently a member of the board of the Ohio Supreme Court’s Judicial College and is chair of the Ohio Capital Case Attorney Fee Council.  Judge Stewart is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Ohio, the District of Columbia, and the United States Supreme Court.