Stanley Barnes, 89; Senior Judge of U.S. 9th Circuit Court

Stanley N. Barnes, an athlete-scholar who was an All-Pacific Coast lineman on UC Berkeley’s “Wonder Teams” of seven decades ago and then undertook what proved to be a lengthy and distinguished career in law, died Monday at his home in Palm Springs of the complications of age.

The senior judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was 89 and had been appointed to that court in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Born in Baraboo, Wis., Barnes served in the Navy in World War I and afterward attended UC Berkeley, where he played football and competed in two Rose Bowl games. In 1918, he was chosen an All Coast center and in 1920 and ’21 All Coast tackle.

After graduating in 1922, he studied at Harvard but returned to Berkeley to take his law degree in 1925. He was admitted to the California Bar that year and began practicing in San Francisco. He came to Los Angeles three years later and stayed in private practice until his appointment to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1946. He was presiding judge of the criminal departments from 1949 to 1950 and presiding judge of the Superior Court from 1952 to 1953, when he was named an assistant attorney general of the United States in charge of the antitrust department. He stayed in that post until Eisenhower named him to the 9th Circuit.

Barnes, who was active in Republican politics, was national president of the Federal Bar Assn. from 1954 to 1955 and chairman of the section of Judicial Administration of the American Bar Assn. from 1966 to 1967. He also was a trustee of the Los Angeles Bar Assn. and in 1971 was given that group’s highest honor, the Price-Shattuck Award.

Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth, a brother, two daughters and eight grandchildren.