William C. Whitbeck

Judge William C. Whitbeck writes for a living. He was for years the legendary Chief Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals—one of the country’s largest and busiest appellate courts—and he still sits on that court, authoring opinions ranging from the simplest slip-and-fall cases to the murder conviction of Jack Kevorkian. During his long legal and political career, he has been a counselor to three Michigan governors. He and his wife Stephanie live in historic downtown Lansing in their twice-renovated 1878 home, just blocks from Michigan’s Capitol. As a practicing attorney and then as a judge, he has seen the legal system from both sides. Judge Whitbeck is the debut author of the legal thriller "To Account for Murder." An excerpt from that novel won the 2007 short story competition of the Michigan State Bar Association. Judge Whitbeck, a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan Law School, is hard at work on a second novel, set in the Detroit area and dealing with the disappearance of a Michigan Supreme Court Justice.