Bibas also studied the role of substantive goals such as remorse and apology in criminal procedure.

[4][5] Bibas was born in New York City and spent his summers growing up working for his father, a Greek immigrant who survived the occupation of Greece during World War II, in his family's restaurants.

He graduated from Columbia in 1989 at age 19 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in political theory.

From 1994 to 1995, Bibas was a law clerk for judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

He worked in private practice with the law firm Covington & Burling from 1995 to 1997, then clerked for justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1997 to 1998, where he was a co-clerk of Raymond Kethledge.

[10] After his Supreme Court clerkship, Bibas was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1998 to 2000.

The Court appointed him to brief and argue Tapia v. United States as amicus curiae.

[16] Cases argued On June 19, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Bibas to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to fill the seat vacated by Judge Midge Rendell, who assumed senior status on July 1, 2015.

[25] According to a legal writing expert, “Judge Bibas is considered one of the best writers on the federal bench.”[26] Bibas’s judicial writing style has been called “instantly recognizable”; its use of short, punchy sentences and colorful examples aims for "radical clarity.