Clifton Keith Rooker

Clifton Keith Rooker, known to many as C. Keith Rooker, built a distinguished legal career spanning academia, private practice, and business leadership. Born in Modesto, California, he graduated cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and earned his Juris Doctorate with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1961, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and served as Major Articles Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He began his career as Law Clerk to Justice Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of California from 1961 to 1962.

Rooker went on to become an associate and later partner at the Salt Lake City firm of Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy. He was a founding faculty member of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he taught from 1973 to 1980 and took particular joy in teaching his students the art of critical thinking. In 1975 he helped form the law firm of Rooker, Larsen, Kimball & Parr (now Parr Brown Gee & Loveless), where his practice centered on complex civil litigation and business transactional work.

In 1985 he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to become a Senior Executive with American Pacific Corporation, a former client, and following a catastrophic 1988 explosion at the company's plant in Henderson, Nevada, he was instrumental in helping rebuild its business, the Western Electrical Chemical Company, in Cedar City, Utah. In 1997 he formed the law firm of Rooker Rawlins LLP in Henderson, Nevada, and Salt Lake City, Utah. After closing the firm in 2010, he continued the private practice of law, business consultation, and mediation until his retirement in January 2022.