Emily Hewitt was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1944. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University and followed that with a Master’s degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1975 and a law degree from Harvard in 1978.

In 1972, Hewitt was ordained a deacon in The Episcopal Church. On July 29, 1974, she was ordained a priest alongside the other members of the “Philadelphia Eleven,” the first women to be ordained as priests in The Episcopal Church.

Hewitt was an assistant professor at Andover Newton Theological School from 1973 to 1975. After graduating from Harvard, she practiced with a Boston law firm for the next fifteen years (1978-1993). In 1998, President Clinton commissioned her as a Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. President Obama designated her as Chief Judge in 2009. She retired from the Court in 2013.