Longest serving federal judge, appointed by President Johnson, retires at 98

[Otto Lidenbrock]

A federal judge in New York City who was nominated by President Lyndon Johnson and who contributed to the landmark case that struck down racial segregation in public schools is retiring at age 98.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein was known for favoring lenient sentences and rehabilitation. He retired this week after moving his remaining cases to his fellow jurists in the federal court based in Brooklyn.

He was the longest-serving incumbent federal judge, the newspaper reported. He spent nearly 53 years on the bench.

Weinstein, who was appointed in 1967, was the last federal judge named by Johnson. Weinstein said he often pushed for the shortest prison sentences possible so people could try to build a better life.

“We need to rule from a place of love, not hate,” he told the Daily News.

Weinstein moved to Brooklyn with his family when he was 5. He enlisted in the Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and served on a submarine where he helped sink a Japanese cruiser.

He graduated from Brooklyn College and enrolled at Columbia Law School after World War II. He contributed research and briefs to aid future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s argument in the the landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling.

In his retirement, Weinstein said he plans to spend more time with his wife, Susan Berk, and work with one of his three sons on a book about Jim Crow laws.

https://apnews.com/4c2bd4c5472f7b57491d95709c481f95

[lpbk2713]

1. Impressive.

Sounds like he's still going strong.

[Botany]

2. Thanx Judge Jack for everything

From Wiki:

Early life, education and military service[edit]
Weinstein was born on August 10, 1921,[1] into a Jewish family living temporarily in Wichita, Kansas, and was raised partly in Brooklyn, New York.[2] He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. He graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1943.[3] During World War II he served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946. His duties included serving as deck officer on board the submarine USS Jallao, where he also ran the radar equipment.[4] He graduated from Columbia Law School with a Bachelor of Laws in 1948.[3]

Career[edit]
After law school he worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was a member of the litigation team for Brown v. Board of Education, and worked on the "one man, one vote" litigation of the 1960s. His colleagues included future Columbia Law colleagues such as Charles Black and Jack Greenberg. He was a law clerk for Justice Stanley Fuld of the New York State Court of Appeals, from 1949 to 1950. He also worked for Republican State Senator Seymour Halpern.[2] He was county attorney of Nassau County, New York from 1955 to 1957.

Federal judicial service[edit]
On January 16, 1967, he was nominated as a federal judge to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, to a seat vacated by Judge Leo F. Rayfiel. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 14, 1967, and received his commission on April 15, 1967. He served as Chief Judge from 1980 to 1988. As a federal judge, he has worked with a number of mass tort cases including cases relating to Agent Orange, asbestos, tobacco, breast implants, DES, Zyprexa, and handguns. He has been known to take on large numbers of cases from other judges, and on one occasion collected most of the unresolved habeas corpus petitions in the Eastern District to bring finality to the claims of many prisoners.[5] Weinstein took senior status on March 1, 1993, but had maintained a full docket of cases since then and continued to do so until he retired into inactive senior status on February 10, 2020. His change to inactive senior status means that while he remains a federal judge, he no longer hears cases or participates in the business of the court.[6]

Academic service[edit]
Weinstein was also a professor at Columbia Law School from 1952 to 1998, continuing to hold his job as a federal judge. Since 1987 he has been an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School. Weinstein's former law clerks include a number of judges and law professors, including Judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Dean Joan Wexler of Brooklyn Law School, Professor Anita Bernstein of Brooklyn Law School, Professor Marty Lederman of Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Elizabeth Nowicki of Tulane Law School, Professor John C.P. Goldberg of Harvard Law School, Professors Samuel Buell and Jonathan B. Wiener of Duke University School of Law, Professor Michael J. Perry of Emory University School of Law and Professor Adam S. Zimmerman of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. There was a guy like this last year.

He died within a week of retiring; something like that.

It was at DU.

[needledriver]

4. Which means Mitch McConnell gets to replace him.

yay.

[LuvNewcastle]

5. Sounds like a wonderful man.

I wish we had more like him.