Justice for All

FROM HIS PURVIEW AS A MARYLAND DISTRICT COURT JUDGE, Zuberi Bakari Williams said, one of the biggest problems facing the country today is that people are too comfortable in their silos. Williams ’00, who presides over trials and hearings in civil and criminal matters, said he is seeing a dangerous reluctance to challenge inherent biases.

Two remedies for young people, he said, are to travel and to listen. “You might find out that you’re not that far apart, or the areas where you’re far apart have to do with experiences that you can never duplicate.”

Williams’ mother, born in Guyana, came to the United States on an academic scholarship. While attending the University of Illinois, she met and married Williams’ father, a track star who grew up in Chicago’s government housing projects. The two vowed to give their future children a better life.

Zuberi Williams was named a Top 40 Under 40 Emerging Leader in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area by the Leadership Center for Excellence in Arlington, Virginia.

In the mid-1970s, the couple moved to the Washington, D.C., area to attend Howard University. When Williams was born, they gave him the Swahili name Zuberi, which means strong or mighty.

“They wanted me to stand out,” Williams said. “You know, I would always stick out because of my skin and who I am, but my name was just the cherry on top. Their message was clear: You’re not going to be able to hide from your responsibilities to help people, uplift people and make America great for everybody.”

The family moved to Charles County, Maryland, where Williams grew up with a love for hip-hop; reciting lyrics from Jay-Z and other East Coast rappers defined his adolescence. Looking back, Williams now understands that the storytelling in the songs helped him better understand how the world was evolving around him.

Williams said he now also sees the judicial benefit of growing up poor around immigrant relatives because his background allows him to be an empathetic judge and leader.

“One of my earliest memories was my family being on welfare,” Williams said. “I remember us being gathered around my grandmother’s kitchen table … doling out to each family member government-subsidized food. I saw how folks worked hard and came together to help others. I think those early scenes gave me an important perspective on how hardworking people sometimes need a little help from the government to make ends meet.”

When first-generation immigrants come into his courtroom, Williams said, he has some familiarity with their stories. “Sometimes when they talk, I can hear my Guyanese uncles, aunts and cousins saying something very similar,” Williams said. “I think it gives me a bit more perspective than others in my position.”

Higher Education

Williams’ parents made it clear that attending a top-tier college was nonnegotiable. As they pestered him about deadlines for submitting college applications, he came across TCU and its horned frog mascot in a Christian college catalog and added it to his list of schools to see his parents’ reaction.

“But then I got accepted,” Williams said. “And then they gave me a scholarship. … I just had a moment where I thought, ‘This is what I’m fated to do.’ ”

The transition wasn’t easy. In Maryland, many of the Black people Williams knew were doctors and lawyers. At TCU, he said, he was one of only 38 Black students outside of athletics, adding that the experience was necessary for his growth. “It was an opportunity for me to figure out how to be close to people who aren’t like me.”

As a scholarship recipient, member of the Student Foundation and employee of the admissions office, Williams was frequently asked to interact with alumni and donors and speak about TCU, both locally and in destinations around the U.S.

“I would go to these events and engage in conversations with these older alumni that would last for just five minutes,” Williams said. “They weren’t trying to be mean; we just didn’t have anything in common.”

“But then I got accepted. And then they gave me a scholarship. … I just had a moment where I thought, ‘This is what I’m fated to do.’ ”
Zuberi Williams on his decision to come to TCU

He took it as a challenge to find common ground for richer conversations. Williams started studying the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. With his library card, he checked out DVDs and got up to speed on new conversational topics.

“I ended up watching every single movie, like The African Queen (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), The Godfather (1972) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969),” Williams said. “And then I learned to talk about these stories, the actors and actresses, and studios of the Golden Age. I was able to make informed references to Sidney Poitier and other actors. I learned to find commonalities in our stories — and that’s where the journey starts.”

During the next summer of alumni events, Williams had engaging conversations, which ultimately expanded his professional network.

As he worked toward completing his marketing degree at the Neeley School of Business, Williams began looking for a graduate school where he could earn both a law degree and an MBA. He found the opportunity at American University in Washington, D.C.

Zuberi Williams teaches civil and criminal trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where he earned his own law degree and an MBA.

After completing a law degree — and still finishing his MBA —he began clerking for the legendary Robert Mack Bell, the 23rd chief judge of the Maryland State Court of Appeals, who was the first Black person to hold the position. In the early 1960s, Bell was the lead defendant in a key civil rights case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case began after Bell and 11 other high school students were convicted of trespassing for a sit-in at a segregated Baltimore restaurant.

“And this is the person I’m apprenticing through,” Williams said. “He was laser-focused on things that were important.”

In a clerkship for Gerald Bruce Lee, then the U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, Williams learned how to work efficiently, even on high-profile cases involving spies and an assassination attempt on President George W. Bush. Lee recalled first meeting Williams at an event for law students.

“I sat on a sofa and talked to the students and later invited them to come back to my chambers to visit me in court. Five of them said they would come, but the only one who showed up was Judge Williams,” Lee said. “He is an optimistic and innovative person. And he has a way of looking at things that empowers others. He has the discipline to respect the rule of law and to apply the law fairly, and he has the compassion to understand how your rulings impact real people.”

Career Ascent

Following his clerkships, Williams rose quickly in his career. He became assistant attorney general for the District of Columbia in 2007 and later went on to serve as a judge in the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings. In 2015, at age 36, Williams became one of the youngest judges in state history to be appointed to the District Court in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Williams has won numerous awards in the ensuing years, including from the Leadership Center for Excellence in Arlington, Virginia, the Maryland Daily Record and the National Bar Association.

Intent on helping others, he worked to expand the American Bar Association’s internship program, which he had participated in as a student. The program places underrepresented law students with judges for summer internships; Williams incorporated field trips to companies including Google, Facebook, Starbucks, Under Armour and Microsoft, where students got to speak to top executives and lawyers.

Today, Williams serves as an adjunct professor at American University’s law school, where he teaches civil and criminal trial advocacy. He also teaches an undergraduate course that he created on law and popular culture; he has students examine portrayals of lawyers, judges and law enforcement in movies and TV shows.

“Teaching at American taught me I have a real gift for breaking down the complex to something simpler for students to understand. It helped give me the confidence to teach a different way and shine, so other schools like Georgetown Law got interested in me,” Williams said. “So now I adjunct there as well.”

Williams fields frequent requests for public speaking, from commencement addresses to sharing his expertise on domestic violence law with other judges.

Being relatable continues to be a hallmark of Williams’ career, said Jarrett Hendrix, who worked as his clerk in the district court and now counts him as a longtime friend. Hendrix said Williams — an aficionado of hip-hop and comic books — comes across as a regular guy who is unafraid to let people see his quirkiness.

Zuberi Williams also teaches an undergraduate course on law and pop culture. “The world is watching these things; you want to be able to connect,” he said. “What I learned is that stories are what bring people together.”

“If you’ve ever been to his judge’s chambers, he has all of his comic book stuff on the walls,” Hendrix said. “I remember when I worked there, he also had a framed patent for the shoes Michael Jackson used in the ‘Smooth Criminal’ video. He’s just an all-around cool guy who just so happens to be a judge as well.”

Williams attributes his success to doing well in school, staying humble — he grew up in a “Black Baptist, six-hour Sunday” family — and asking for help when he needed it.

His ability to connect with people through popular culture, a skill he finessed at TCU, has served him well. Williams continues to advise his students and clerks to pay attention to movies and TV, and to watch big events like the World Cup and the Super Bowl, even if they aren’t interested.

“The world is watching these things; you want to be able to connect,” he said. “What I learned is that stories are what bring people together.”