Judge David O. Carter is a United States federal judge.  He sits on the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the federal trial court in Southern California.

Judge Carter received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1967, where he was a runner and nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship.  He then entered the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War as a First Lieutenant.  During his service, he received a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart.  After being medically discharged, he attended and received a law degree from UCLA School of Law in 1972.

After law school, he spent nine years as an assistant district attorney in Santa Ana, California, where he prosecuted complex criminal cases.  Judge Carter then joined the California state court bench in 1981 and served in Orange County for seventeen years.  He was nominated for the United States federal court by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate on October 21, 1998.

As a federal judge, Judge Carter has presided over numerous notable cases.  He oversaw a months-long trial between American doll companies Mattel and MGA Entertainment over the intellectual property rights to the Barbie and Bratz doll products.  He also decided Barnett, et al. v. Obama, et al., a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s citizenship and eligibility to serve as president—this case helped to resolve the legal issues related to President Obama’s birth certificate.  In addition to these civil cases, Judge Carter has also presided over several complex criminal matters, including months-long trials involving the Mexican Mafia, a Mexican-American gang, and the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang.

He regularly hears cases involving Chinese corporations and nationals.  These include cases that raise questions of the jurisdiction of United States federal courts, extraterritoriality, service of process, and numerous issues related to contracts (e.g. forum selection, choice of law, arbitration).  He has also presided over a multitude of intellectual property (i.e. copyright, patents, trademarks) and transnational disputes involving Chinese corporations.

Judge Carter has extensive experience as a lecturer and advisor on international law.  He regularly travels internationally on behalf of the United Nations and the U.S. State Department to meet with judicial officers worldwide.  His recent rule of law work includes projects in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Malawi, Indonesia, Iraq, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Timor-Leste.  He is also an editor of several benchbooks and has taught the course “The International Law of Narcotics Trafficking and Terrorism” at the University of California, Irvine for twenty years.