Published on: Thursday, July 1, 2021

Since the death of Judge Jack B. Weinstein on June 15 at age 99, his legendary life and legal career have been celebrated by fellow judges, who hailed him as a role model and champion of justice, and others of more humble standing who remember him as an “incredibly thoughtful” gentleman who stood up for “little guys.” Previous coverage available here.

By any measure, Weinstein was a giant in the legal profession. A member of Thurgood Marshall’s legal team that prepared the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, he was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Eastern District of New York in 1967. In 53 years, until his retirement in 2020, he reinvented how courts handle mass tort litigation, greatly upgraded the role of U.S. magistrate judges, and conducted himself in an egalitarian manner, wearing business suits instead of a robe in the courtroom and often sitting at a table with defendants as he sentenced them (article available here).

“The Judiciary has lost a national treasure,” said Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie in a statement. She added that during his tenure as chief judge of the Eastern District, Weinstein “helped transform the Court into what it is today — a court that has served and continues to serve as a model of innovation in the administration of justice for the federal courts nationally.”

A statement from the Eastern District of New York, where Weinstein served as chief judge from 1980 to 1988, provided a long list of his innovations, noting "in keeping with his concern that indigent persons be properly represented, he created the Criminal Justice Act Committee to ensure that the Constitutional guarantee of a right to representation in criminal cases is meaningfully afforded to indigent defendants.”