Background
Robb was born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, the son of Court of Appeals Judge Charles Henry Robb, He received an Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1928.
Robb was born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, the son of Court of Appeals Judge Charles Henry Robb, He received an Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1928.
Yale University; Yale Law School.
He received an Bachelor of Laws from Yale Law School in 1931. He was an assistant United States. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1931 to 1938. Robb was in private practice in Washington, District of Columbia from 1938 to 1969.
Robb was probably best known as special counsel to the Atomic Energy Commission at an Atomic Energy Commission hearing on the loyalty of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
The board voted 2-1 to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. In 1968, Robb represented Barry Goldwater in his libel suit against Ralph Ginzburg and Fact Magazine, which had claimed that Goldwater was mentally unstable.
The jury awarded Goldwater $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, which was upheld on appeal. A year later, Robb was appointed a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
He was nominated by President Richard M. Nixon on April 23, 1969, to a seat vacated by John A. Danaher.
He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 5, 1969, and received his commission on May 6, 1969. He assumed senior status on May 31, 1982, and died on December 19, 1985. He was succeeded on the appellate court by Antonin Scalia.
Robb was portrayed by Philip O"Brien in the 1980 British Broadcasting Corporation miniseries Oppenheimer, and by Michael Cumpsty in The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a 2009 episode of the Public Broadcasting Service series The American Experience.
He was the court-appointed attorney for Earl Browder, a leader of the Communist Party, in a Contempt of Congress case in 1950, earning praise from Browder despite their political differences. Over the course of four weeks the Robb and the Atomic Energy Commission panel interrogated Oppenheimer and other witnesses on his past affiliations with Communists, with Robb using harsh prosecutorial tactics.
He also successfully defended Otto Otepka, a former State Department official accused of giving unauthorized material to a Senate committee.
