Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility Will Go to Professor Jack Greenberg and Jeh Johnson

Columbia Law School will award its annual Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility to Professor Jack Greenberg ’48, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP-LDF), and the Hon. Jeh Charles Johnson ’82, general counsel to the U.S. Department of Defense.

 

The prizes will be awarded at a luncheon at the Pierre Hotel on November 17, 2009.

 

Jack Greenberg’s name is synonymous with America’s civil rights movement. Hired fresh out of law school by then-NAACP LDF Director-Counsel and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Greenberg became a member of the team that successfully argued the seminal civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court. He later headed the NAACP LDF from 1961 to 1984, tripling the organization’s caseload and guiding more cases before the Supreme Court than any entity except the U.S. government itself.  

 

After re-joining the Law School faculty as a full professor and vice dean, Greenberg created the Human Rights Internship Program, in which several thousand Columbia students have worked at dozens of organizations worldwide every summer. He now champions human rights on a global scale, from Eastern Europe to South Africa. 

 

Jeh Charles Johnson has served in a variety of roles during his distinguished career. In 1989, he left private practice to be an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, prosecuting public corruption cases. He returned to private practice in 1992 and, a year later, was elected the first African-American partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP.  In 1998, President Clinton appointed him general counsel of the Department of the Air Force. He returned to Paul Weiss in 2001 and, as a litigation partner, managed some of the firm’s highest profile commercial cases. 

 

In February 2009, President Obama appointed Johnson general counsel of the Department of Defense. In that role, he advises the U.S. secretary of defense on matters such as military operations, international affairs, intelligence, environment and installations, and health policy.  

 

The Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility honors individual attorneys who, like Lawrence Wien ’27, put their resources and legal skills to work for the public good. The recipients serve as positive role models for both the profession and for law students. The prize, established in 1982 at both the Columbia University Law and Business schools, is bestowed annually with the participation of the Wien family. Since 1996, in consultation with Mr. Wien’s descendents, the award has been bestowed solely by the Law School.

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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal, and environmental law.
 

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