the honorable Arlen Specter ✝
Former U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania
Arlen Specter was a former United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat, but was a Republican from 1965 until switching to the Democratic Party in 2009. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for thirty years in the Senate.
Specter first opened a law firm with Marvin Katz, who would later become a federal judge. Specter served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy and helped devise the “single bullet theory.” In 1965, Specter was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia, a position that he would hold until he lost his re-election bid in 1973. On April 28, 2009, Specter announced that, after 44 years as an elected Republican, he was switching membership to the Democratic Party, On May 18, 2010, Specter was defeated in the Democratic primary by Joe Sestak, who then was defeated by current Senator Pat Toomey in the general election. Toomey replaced Specter on January 3, 2011.
In fall 2011, Specter was an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught a course on the relationship between Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on separation of powers and the confirmation process.
Arlen Specter passed away at his home in Philadelphia on October 14, 2012 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Specter was hosted by The Common Good in 2007 for a Meet & Greet.
Read more:
Will Dunham, ‘Former senator Arlen Specter, 82, dies of cancer’, Reuters, 14 October 2012
Linda Greenhouse, ‘Senator Specter and the Law’, The New York Times, 20 May 2010
Brian Montopoli, ‘Sen. Arlen Specter To Become a Democrat’, CBS, 28 April 2009
