Fogel was born in San Francisco, California, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University in 1971 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1974.

[2][4] As a Superior Court judge, Fogel on November 23, 1992 allowed the East Side Union High School District to screen Channel One News, whose content included commercials, in classrooms provided that students who opt out receive alternative assignments.

[5] In 1997, Fogel heard a case challenging Measure B, a ballot initiative for a public transportation sales tax passed by 52 percent of voters.

[8] On January 8, 2010, Fogel sentenced two people to federal prison for defrauding 24 Hour Fitness; one of the convicted, Susan Powell, served as a vice president of that company.

[10] Other cases that Fogel has presided over federally included that of serial bank robber Froilan Alix Roldan, whom he sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment on September 30, 2009.

[13] On December 15, 2006, in the case Morales v. Tilton, Judge Fogel ruled that California execution procedures violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution because inexperienced, untrained prison staff do executions in crowded, poorly lit settings; Fogel wrote that "implementation of lethal injection" by California "is broken, but...can be fixed.

[17] In response to Fogel's ruling in Morales v. Tilton, The New York Times wrote in a 2011 editorial: "For legislators in state capitols considering whether to abolish the [death] penalty... this case... has documented how lethal injection can be cruel and unusual punishment when unprofessionally administered and how the culture of prisons breeds that shoddy approach.