Early Life, Roots & Education at the University of Utah
Diana Hagen was born and raised in Ogden, Utah, a city nestled at the base of the Wasatch Mountains just north of Salt Lake City. Ogden, known for its proud working-class heritage and strong community ties, provided the early backdrop for what would become one of the most distinguished legal careers in the state's modern history. Hagen attended Ben Lomond High School, an institution that has produced generations of Utah professionals and civic leaders. Her years there were formative in the truest sense — she developed an early appreciation for the structures of argument, persuasion, and public discourse that would define her professional life. Those who knew her in those early years often described a young woman of unusual focus and articulate conviction, someone for whom words were not merely instruments of communication but tools of precision and justice.
After graduating from Ben Lomond, Hagen enrolled at the University of Utah, one of the American West's flagship public research institutions, founded in 1850 and situated on a scenic bench overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. There she pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication — a deliberate choice that would prove deeply consequential. Speech communication as a discipline is not merely about the mechanics of talking; it is, at its best, a rigorous intellectual exercise in rhetoric, logic, audience analysis, and the ethical dimensions of persuasion. For Hagen, this foundation would later translate directly into the rarified world of oral appellate argument, where lawyers have only minutes to distill complex legal reasoning into coherent, compelling presentations before skeptical judges. She excelled in her undergraduate studies, emerging not only as a skilled communicator but as someone capable of sustained analytical engagement with difficult ideas.
The decision to pursue a legal career was perhaps a natural extension of her undergraduate focus. Law, particularly appellate law, is at its core an exercise in written and oral advocacy — the very disciplines Hagen had spent years refining. She applied to the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, one of the region's most respected legal institutions, and was admitted into its rigorous Juris Doctor program. What followed was three years of intense intellectual formation that would shape every aspect of her future practice. The S.J. Quinney College of Law, named for a prominent Utah attorney and civic leader, has long prided itself on producing graduates who are not only technically proficient but deeply committed to the public interest and the rule of law. Hagen would exemplify that tradition in full.
Her law school record was exceptional by any measure. She graduated in 1998 with her Juris Doctor degree awarded Order of the Coif — one of the highest academic distinctions in American legal education, reserved for the top ten percent of graduating students at participating law schools. The Order of the Coif is a national honor society whose membership signals academic excellence and has historically been one of the most reliable predictors of professional achievement in the law. But Hagen's distinction went far beyond GPA. She competed on the law school's National Moot Court Team, representing the university in prestigious intercollegiate competitions against law schools from across the country. Moot court requires students to argue hypothetical appellate cases before panels of judges — often experienced practitioners or actual jurists — and the skills demanded are precisely those that translate most directly to elite appellate practice.
Hagen also earned first place, Best Brief, and Best Oral Advocate honors in the Traynor Moot Court Competition, a prestigious internal competition at the law school. Additionally, she served as a Note and Comment Editor of the Utah Law Review, the school's flagship academic journal. Law review service requires not only strong legal analysis but meticulous editorial judgment and the ability to engage with cutting-edge legal scholarship — skills that demand a rare combination of intellectual breadth and attention to detail. Looking back, her law school years appear almost prophetically aligned with the career that would follow: the moot court work anticipated her eventual mastery of oral appellate argument, the law review work anticipated the scholarly rigor she brought to her written briefs, and the Order of the Coif signaled the academic seriousness that would underpin it all.
It is worth pausing to appreciate what her legal education represented in a broader social context. Hagen later reflected that graduating without student loan debt gave her the freedom to make unconventional professional choices — including the decision to leave private practice for a substantially lower-paying position as a federal prosecutor. That kind of financial flexibility, rare among law graduates, meant that her career could be guided by intellectual passion and public commitment rather than economic necessity alone. In this sense, the material conditions of her education were not incidental to the shape of her career; they were enabling constraints that helped define it. From Ogden to the University of Utah's hilltop campus, Diana Hagen's early years were not merely prelude — they were preparation, executed with an intensity and intentionality that would become the hallmark of everything she did thereafter.
The Beginning of a Legal Career: Clerkship & Private Practice
Upon graduating from law school in 1998, Diana Hagen embarked on the first chapter of her professional legal career in the manner most coveted by top graduates: a federal judicial clerkship. She was selected to serve as a law clerk for United States District Court Judge Tena Campbell, one of the most distinguished members of the federal judiciary in Utah. Judicial clerkships, particularly at the federal level, are extraordinarily competitive positions that offer new lawyers a privileged vantage point from which to observe the legal system in operation at the highest levels. Clerks draft bench memoranda, conduct legal research, assist judges in preparing opinions, and participate in the daily intellectual life of a federal court. The experience is unmatched in terms of the legal education it provides and the professional relationships it forges.
Judge Tena Campbell was herself a significant figure in Utah's legal landscape. Appointed to the federal bench in 1995, she was one of the first women to serve as a United States District Court Judge in Utah and had built a reputation for scholarly rigor and procedural fairness. Clerking for Judge Campbell placed Hagen at the center of federal litigation in one of the nation's most dynamic legal jurisdictions, dealing with everything from civil rights disputes and complex commercial litigation to criminal proceedings involving federal statutes. For a young lawyer with Hagen's intellectual formation — trained in moot court, steeped in law review scholarship, and burning with interest in appellate advocacy — the clerkship was a revelation. She witnessed firsthand how great legal minds approached complex disputes, how judges weighed competing arguments, and how the law operated not just on paper but in the messy reality of human conflict.
After completing her clerkship, Hagen made what might initially appear to be an orthodox move for a high-achieving law graduate: she joined the litigation section of Parr Waddoups Brown Gee & Loveless (now known as Parr Brown Gee & Loveless), one of Salt Lake City's most established and prestigious law firms. Founded in the nineteenth century, Parr Brown has long been regarded as among the most capable private law firms in the Intermountain West, with a clientele spanning major corporations, financial institutions, and governmental entities. Hagen's work at the firm focused on media law and First Amendment litigation — a highly specialized and intellectually demanding field that sits at the intersection of constitutional law, commercial interests, and the public interest in a free press.
First Amendment and media law practice in the late 1990s was undergoing rapid transformation. The digital revolution was beginning to disrupt established media institutions; questions about online speech, defamation liability in digital contexts, and the scope of constitutional protection for new forms of expression were emerging with increasing urgency. Hagen's work at Parr Brown placed her at the cutting edge of these debates, representing media clients in disputes that touched on foundational constitutional values. The experience sharpened her constitutional instincts, deepened her understanding of how courts approach conflicts between competing rights and interests, and honed her skills as a litigator in a firm environment that demanded both technical precision and strategic sophistication.
Yet for all its prestige, private practice at a large commercial firm was not where Hagen ultimately found her professional home. The transition she made next — from the comfortable corridors of elite private practice to the more austere but more purposeful world of federal public service — tells us something essential about her character and professional values. In January 2001, she joined the Appellate Section of the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Utah, a decision that required accepting a pay cut of approximately thirty percent. By her own later account, this was a conscious choice driven not by financial calculation but by a deep desire to engage with the law at its most fundamental level — arguing before appellate courts on behalf of the United States government in cases involving the most serious questions of criminal justice and constitutional principle. Few career transitions better illustrate the distinction between working for success and working for meaning.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah handles the full range of federal criminal and civil litigation within the state, from drug trafficking and financial fraud to national security cases and complex civil rights matters. The appellate section, in particular, performs a function of extraordinary intellectual difficulty: when cases have been tried and convicted and the defendant appeals, appellate prosecutors must defend the conviction in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado, against arguments crafted by some of the most skilled defense attorneys in the country. It is adversarial scholarship at its most demanding, requiring not only mastery of the original trial record but the ability to engage with novel constitutional arguments, shifts in legal doctrine, and the unpredictable questions of a federal appellate panel. From her very first days in that office, Hagen's formidable moot court training, her law review editing instincts, and her clerkship-forged understanding of judicial thinking all converged in a role that seemed made for exactly her.
"Her intellect and abilities are only matched by her kindness and generosity."
Federal Prosecutor: High-Profile Cases & Seventeen Years of Public Service
Over the course of seventeen years as a federal prosecutor, Diana Hagen became one of the most accomplished appellate attorneys ever to serve in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Utah. The sheer volume and quality of her work during this period is staggering: she briefed well over two hundred appeals and presented more than sixty oral arguments before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado. For context, many experienced appellate lawyers consider arguing a handful of appeals before a federal circuit court a significant career milestone. Hagen's sixty-plus oral arguments represent an exceptional record of courtroom engagement with one of the nation's most important federal appellate tribunals, which covers a six-state region encompassing Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
The breadth and complexity of the cases Hagen handled during these years was extraordinary. Federal criminal appeals routinely involve the most difficult and contested questions in American law: the scope of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, the requirements of due process and fair trial, the limits of prosecutorial authority, the reach of federal criminal statutes, and the standards governing the admissibility of evidence. To brief and argue over two hundred such cases demands not only exceptional legal knowledge but a kind of intellectual endurance — the capacity to engage freshly and rigorously with each new case's unique facts and legal questions while maintaining consistency with the principles established across dozens of prior arguments. Hagen's record in this regard was recognized repeatedly by her supervisors and peers, who described her as a lawyer of rare precision and strategic intelligence.
Among her many cases, none attracted more national attention than her work on the prosecution of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee for the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002 at the age of fourteen, in what became one of the most widely covered criminal cases in American history. She was held captive for nine months before being discovered and returned to her family. The case gripped the nation and raised profound questions about child safety, religious extremism, and the capacity of the criminal justice system to bring to account those who commit acts of extraordinary cruelty. Mitchell, a self-styled religious fanatic who claimed divine authority for his crimes, and Barzee, his wife and accomplice, were eventually prosecuted in federal court.
Hagen was part of the trial team that successfully prosecuted both defendants. The prosecution of Mitchell in particular was a lengthy and complex proceeding: Mitchell attempted to delay proceedings by singing hymns and exhibiting disruptive behavior; competency hearings consumed years of pre-trial litigation; the defense mounted extensive challenges to the admissibility of key evidence. Ultimately, Mitchell was convicted of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines and was sentenced to life in federal prison. Barzee was separately convicted and sentenced to decades in prison. The successful prosecution was a landmark achievement for the U.S. Attorney's Office and for Hagen personally, representing not only a high-profile legal victory but a fulfillment of the criminal justice system's deepest purpose: accountability for the most serious offenses against human dignity. The Department of Justice honored Hagen and her team with a Superior Performance Award for the Mitchell prosecution.
Hagen also handled the prosecution related to the murder of Millard County Sheriff's Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox, another high-profile case that underscored the gravity and consequence of the work performed by federal prosecutors in Utah. Deputy Fox's murder in 2014 was a harrowing crime that shocked law enforcement communities across the state. The subsequent federal prosecution demanded the same combination of legal rigor and human sensitivity that Hagen brought to every significant case she argued. Beyond these marquee cases, her seventeen-year tenure involved hundreds of less prominent but equally important proceedings in which the rights of victims, the integrity of the criminal justice process, and the constitutional protections afforded to the accused all demanded careful and thoughtful attention.
Over the course of her career in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Hagen accumulated an impressive array of professional honors. She received four United States Attorney's Awards, recognizing exceptional performance as a federal prosecutor. She also received a Federal Bureau of Investigation Award, acknowledging the collaborative law enforcement work that underpins successful federal prosecution. These recognitions from within the federal law enforcement community — institutions not given to easy praise — testified to the esteem in which Hagen was held by the professionals who worked most closely with her. In recognition of her exceptional contributions, she was eventually promoted from Appellate Chief — a position she held for nearly a decade — to First Assistant United States Attorney, the second-highest position in the office. Her arc from new hire to First Assistant over seventeen years was a testimony to sustained excellence at every stage of a demanding and consequential career.
Rise to the Appellate Bench: Utah Court of Appeals (2017–2022)
On June 23, 2017, Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert appointed Diana Hagen to the Utah Court of Appeals, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge J. Frederic Voros Jr. The appointment represented a natural and well-merited transition: from the most accomplished appellate advocate in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah to one of seven judges on the intermediate appellate court that serves as the first stop for most appeals from Utah's district courts. The Utah Court of Appeals was established by constitutional amendment in 1986 to help manage the appellate caseload of the Utah Supreme Court, and it handles thousands of cases each year across the full spectrum of civil, criminal, family, and administrative law. Appointment to the court is one of the most prestigious judicial honors available in the state, and Hagen was widely regarded as a near-ideal candidate: someone with unmatched appellate experience, deep knowledge of both federal and state law, and a record of professional excellence that spoke for itself without qualification.
As an appellate judge, Hagen approached the work with the same rigor and systematic intelligence that had characterized her prosecutorial career. In the Utah Court of Appeals, judges do not hear witnesses or preside over trials; instead, they review the records of proceedings in the lower courts, read briefs from both parties, hear oral arguments, and then deliberate with their colleagues to produce written opinions that become binding precedent. The craft of opinion writing is distinct from the craft of advocacy: where an advocate argues one side, a judge must consider all sides fairly and arrive at a reasoned conclusion that can be justified by reference to legal principle, precedent, and the specific facts of the case. For Hagen, who had spent seventeen years crafting arguments designed to persuade appellate judges, the transition to the other side of that process offered a new and revealing vantage point.
During her nearly five years on the Utah Court of Appeals, Hagen participated in hundreds of decisions across every area of Utah law. She joined a court that is known for the intellectual quality of its judges and the seriousness with which it approaches even the most routine cases, guided by the principle that every party deserves careful consideration of their legal arguments regardless of the magnitude of the case. Hagen's opinions were praised by colleagues and legal scholars for their clarity, their careful attention to precedent, and their willingness to engage honestly with difficult legal questions rather than retreating to safe but unilluminating formulas. Her background in First Amendment and media law, combined with her encyclopedic knowledge of federal criminal procedure from her prosecutorial years, gave her an unusually broad doctrinal foundation from which to approach the diverse caseload of the intermediate appellate court.
Beyond her core judicial duties, Hagen served in several important administrative and educational capacities during her time on the Court of Appeals. She served as chair of the Supreme Court OPC (Office of Professional Conduct) Oversight Committee, which exercises oversight over Utah's attorney discipline system. She also chaired the Judicial Education Committee, reflecting her longstanding commitment to professional development within the legal community, and served as the appellate court representative on the Utah Sentencing Commission, contributing to the systematic effort to bring coherence and fairness to criminal sentencing across the state. Each of these roles extended her influence well beyond the walls of her own courtroom, shaping the institutional structures within which all Utah lawyers and judges operate.
Hagen also maintained her deep commitment to legal education throughout this period. She spent many years as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where she taught appellate practice — passing on the skills and insights she had accumulated over decades of front-line advocacy — and coached intercollegiate moot court teams. The moot court work was particularly resonant: Hagen had herself competed on the national moot court team as a law student, and in coaching the next generation of competitors, she was completing a cycle that spoke to the deepest continuity of the legal profession's intellectual tradition. Her students consistently recalled her as a demanding but extraordinarily effective mentor — someone who expected excellence but also understood exactly what it felt like to stand before a panel of judges and argue for a position under fire.
In 2020, Hagen stood for retention election — the mechanism by which appointed Utah judges are periodically submitted to a popular vote to remain in office. She won her retention election, an affirmation by the voters of Utah that her service on the Court of Appeals merited continuation. The retention process in Utah involves evaluation by the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, which assesses judges against detailed criteria for legal ability, integrity, communication, and case management. Hagen's performance evaluations consistently reflected the high professional regard in which she was held by practitioners who appeared before her court, by court staff, and by her judicial colleagues. By the time her term on the Court of Appeals approached its end, she had established herself as not merely a capable judge but a genuine leader of Utah's legal community — someone whose next chapter on the bench seemed destined to be written at the very highest level.
Utah Supreme Court Justice: History, Achievement & Landmark Rulings
On March 29, 2022, Governor Spencer J. Cox nominated Diana Hagen to the Utah Supreme Court, the state's court of last resort and the final authority on questions of Utah law. The nomination came through the Appellate Judicial Nominating Commission, which had submitted seven names to the governor after a rigorous evaluation process. Cox selected Hagen from among those seven candidates, describing her as someone whose career had prepared her in every possible way for the responsibilities of the highest court. The nomination required confirmation by the Utah State Senate; Hagen appeared before the Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee on May 11, 2022, where her nomination was favorably reported out of committee the same day, a testimony to the breadth of professional respect she commanded across partisan lines. The full Utah Senate confirmed her appointment on May 18, 2022, and she was sworn in the same day, filling the seat vacated by the resignation of Justice Constandinos Himonas.
Hagen's appointment had a significance that extended well beyond her individual qualifications, remarkable as those were. When she joined the court alongside Justice Jill Pohlman, who was appointed at roughly the same time, the Utah Supreme Court became majority female for the first time in the state's history. This was a milestone of profound cultural and institutional importance. Utah had appointed its first female Supreme Court justice, Christine Durham, in 1982; for the next four decades, women had remained in the minority on the court. The moment when two women joined simultaneously to create a female majority was widely celebrated by the legal community and by advocates for gender equality in the judiciary. Both Hagen and Pohlman were graduates of the S.J. Quinney College of Law, making them also the first female graduates of that institution to serve on the Utah Supreme Court — a fact their alma mater celebrated with justified pride.
As a Utah Supreme Court Justice, Hagen operated at the apex of the state's judicial hierarchy. The Utah Supreme Court exercises ultimate authority over the interpretation of the Utah Constitution, Utah statutes, and the common law of the state. Its decisions bind every court in Utah and shape the legal framework within which millions of Utahns live, work, and resolve their disputes. The cases that reach the Supreme Court are, by definition, the most complex, contested, and consequential legal questions in the state — cases where the law is unclear or where lower courts have reached conflicting conclusions, cases involving fundamental constitutional rights, and cases where the stakes for the parties are the highest imaginable. Hagen approached this role with the same combination of intellectual seriousness, procedural rigor, and human sensitivity that had defined every prior phase of her legal career.
Among the most significant matters to come before the court during her tenure was Utah's high-profile redistricting litigation. The redistricting case arose from the Utah Legislature's repeated efforts to override the state's citizen-initiated independent redistricting commission. In November 2018, Utah voters had passed Proposition 4, which established an independent redistricting commission to draw congressional maps free from direct legislative control. The legislature subsequently passed legislation that significantly curtailed the commission's authority. The resulting legal battle wound through the courts for years, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between direct democracy, legislative authority, and the interpretation of the state constitution. In February 2026, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously rejected the legislature's appeal of a lower court decision that had ordered the use of a map drawn by the independent commission. The ruling was one of the most consequential in recent Utah constitutional history, directly affecting the shape of Utah's congressional delegation and the political representation of hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Beyond the redistricting case, Hagen participated in numerous other important decisions during her four years on the Supreme Court, contributing to the court's jurisprudence across areas including criminal procedure, administrative law, family law, and civil rights. Her colleagues consistently praised her judicial temperament — her ability to engage with difficult cases without losing sight of the human stakes involved, her commitment to writing clear and well-reasoned opinions that the legal community could understand and apply, and her generosity as a colleague in the collegial deliberative process that is essential to the functioning of a multi-member appellate court. Chief Justice Matthew Durrant spoke for many in the legal community when he praised her intellect and noted that she regularly took opportunities to meet with school groups, mentor young lawyers, and connect with members of the public — continuing in her role as a justice the tradition of civic engagement and legal education that had characterized her entire career.
The broader arc of Hagen's service on the Utah Supreme Court also reflected her commitment to the institutional health of the judiciary as a whole. She participated in educational initiatives, continued her involvement in bar association governance, and brought to the court's deliberations the perspective of someone who had argued hundreds of cases and knew firsthand what effective and clear judicial opinions meant for the lawyers and parties who depended on them. In the history of the Utah Supreme Court, few justices have arrived with so complete and multi-faceted a legal formation as Diana Hagen — prosecutor, private practitioner, professor, intermediate appellate judge, and now, finally, a member of the court that spoke the last word on Utah law.
"Justice Hagen took every opportunity to meet with school groups, mentor young lawyers, and connect with members of the public. This is a loss for the judiciary."
Resignation, Legacy & the Enduring Mark of a Life in Law
On May 8, 2026, Diana Hagen submitted her letter of resignation to Governor Spencer J. Cox, effective immediately. The resignation brought to a sudden and painful close a career in public legal service that had spanned twenty-six years and had been marked, at every stage, by exceptional achievement. The immediate circumstances of the resignation were the product of a complaint that had been lodged with the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission in December 2025, alleging that Hagen had engaged in an improper relationship with David Reymann, an attorney who had represented the League of Women Voters of Utah and other plaintiffs in the high-profile redistricting litigation. The commission had investigated the complaint and dismissed it, finding insufficient evidence to sustain the allegations as a matter of judicial discipline. However, dissatisfied with the commission's handling of the matter, Governor Cox, House Speaker Mike Schultz, and Senate President J. Stuart Adams called for an independent investigation — a development that, Hagen wrote in her resignation letter, had become an unsustainable burden on her family and friends who, in her words, had not chosen public life.
Hagen vigorously denied the adultery allegations. In her letter to the Judicial Conduct Commission, she stated that her former husband's accusations were false and that the suggestion that she had been ethically compromised in carrying out her official duties was equally false. She explained that she had rekindled a friendship with Reymann as her thirty-year marriage dissolved in the spring of 2025 — a deeply personal development that coincided with, but she insisted was entirely separate from, her official work on the court. She also noted that her last direct involvement in the redistricting case had occurred in October 2024, and that she had voluntarily recused herself from all cases involving Reymann as an attorney in May 2025, with her recusal formally reflected in the court's September 15, 2025 opinion in the League of Women Voters case. The recusal, she argued, demonstrated precisely the kind of ethical self-awareness that judicial ethics demands — identifying a potential conflict and removing oneself from it before any harm to the integrity of the proceedings could occur.
"It is with deep sadness that I tender my immediate resignation as a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court," Hagen wrote to Governor Cox. "I do this with profound love and respect for my colleagues on the Court, who are not only brilliant jurists but also dedicated, hard-working public servants. I sincerely regret the disruption my sudden departure will cause the Court and the parties who come before it." She acknowledged the heightened standard of conduct that public office requires, writing that she understood public officials are rightly held to a higher standard and must accept a greater degree of public scrutiny. But she drew a firm line at the exposure of her family and friends to what she described as the intensely personal details surrounding the painful dissolution of her marriage. It was, ultimately, an act of personal sacrifice consistent with the sense of responsibility and care for others that had marked her entire public career.
The response from the legal community to Hagen's resignation was one of genuine and widespread sorrow. Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, in a statement that captured the sentiments of many of her colleagues, praised her as a valued member of the judiciary who had dedicated her legal career to public service. He recalled her prosecution of Brian David Mitchell in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case and her ongoing commitment to mentoring young lawyers and connecting with school groups and members of the public. "As a Justice," he said, "her intellect and abilities are only matched by her kindness and generosity." The governor's office, while receiving her resignation, acknowledged her years of service to the state. Even amid the political tensions generated by the redistricting controversy, the response of the legal establishment reflected a clear-eyed recognition that the judiciary was losing one of its finest members.
What then is the legacy of Diana Hagen's career in law? It is, first, a legacy of sheer professional accomplishment of the first order. To rise from law school to the highest court of a state through a path that included a prestigious federal clerkship, elite private practice, seventeen years as a federal appellate prosecutor, and five years on an intermediate appellate court — all while accumulating honors, awards, and the professional respect of those who worked alongside her — is to have lived a life of extraordinary legal achievement by any measure. The specific cases she worked, from Elizabeth Smart to Utah's redistricting battle, were not peripheral to the life of the community she served but central to it, touching on the most fundamental questions of justice, accountability, and democratic representation that a legal system is asked to resolve.
Her legacy is also, more quietly but no less importantly, a legacy of mentorship, institutional service, and professional leadership. The lawyers she trained in appellate practice and moot court at the University of Utah, the bar association colleagues who benefited from her leadership as president of the Women Lawyers of Utah, the Salt Lake County Bar Association, and the Utah Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, the future judges and advocates who watched and learned from the care she brought to her judicial work — all of these represent extensions of her influence that will outlast any individual ruling or legal brief. The decision, early in her career, to accept a substantial pay cut in order to do work that mattered more to her than work that paid more, was itself a kind of teaching — a demonstration that a legal career can be built on values as well as ambition, and that the two are not in conflict. The recognition she received over the years — the Federal Bar Association Distinguished Service Award, the S.J. Quinney College of Law's 2015 Alumna of the Year award, the Utah Philanthropy Day Heart & Hands Award for her volunteer work with the Girl Scouts of Utah — all pointed to a life that was full in the broadest sense: professional, intellectual, civic, and personal. Whatever the ultimate judgment of history on the final chapter of her time on the bench, the totality of Diana Hagen's career in the law is the record of a life given, with remarkable consistency and seriousness, to the service of justice and the public good.
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