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2002
Award Dinner
2001
Award Dinner
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25th Anniversary Human Rights
Award Dinner
Extraordinary Leaders
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LCHR
President Tom A. Bernstein
Tom Bernstein’s professional life reflects a remarkable blend
of successful business initiatives and commitment to public service.
Tonight the Lawyers Committee honors Tom for his extraordinary leadership
on behalf of international human rights. As President of the Lawyers
Committee, a position he has held since 1993, Tom has led the Board
with Chairman Bill Zabel. Together they have helped guide the Lawyers
Committee and have played a pivotal role in its growth and development.
Tom joined the Board in 1983.
Tom’s association with the Lawyers Committee dates back to the
organization’s beginning. In 1980, he was one of the first volunteer
lawyers to take an asylum case, representing Heherson “Sonny”
Alvarez, Senator Ninoy Aquino’s chief political aide. Alvarez
was forced into exile because of death threats from the Marcos government.
After winning asylum for Mr. Alvarez and his family, Tom went on to
work on larger asylum policy issues, and to undertake foreign missions
to the former Soviet Union and the Philippines on the Lawyers Committee’s
behalf. He has also been actively involved in the Lawyers Committee’s
advocacy work in Washington, and its work protecting and supporting
human rights defenders - from Egypt and Tunisia to Argentina
and China. Tom and his father, Bob, through Human Rights in China,
played an important role in pressing for the release of Xu Wenli,
another of tonight’s honorees.
Tom’s public service work in the human rights arena has also
extended to his membership on the Board and Executive Committee of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and his service
as Chair of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience. With Dean
Anthony Kronman, Tom also established the Robert L. Bernstein Human
Rights Fellowship program at Yale Law School, named in honor of his
father. In addition, Tom serves as Vice-Chairman of the Board of WNYC
and as a Board and Executive Committee member of the Fresh Air Fund
and the Partnership for Public Service.
In his spare time, Tom is the Co-Founder and President of Chelsea
Piers, the largest sports and entertainment complex in New York City,
where we are gathered tonight.
Previously, Tom was one of the two principals of the Silver Screen
Partnerships, which financed more than 75 films produced by The Walt
Disney Company, including The Little Mermaid, Pretty Woman, and
Beauty and the Beast. Tom also produced the motion picture Sakharov
for HBO. For nine years, Tom was one of the lead owners of the Texas
Rangers Baseball Club.
Tom is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where he was
an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating from
law school, Tom served as a law clerk for the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein.
Following his clerkship, he started his career in the entertainment
department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison.
Tom is married to Andi Bernstein and they have three children: Sam,
Lee and Will. |
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LCHR
Board Chairman William D. Zabel, Esq.
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Bill Zabel’s career exemplifies the best traditions
of the U.S. legal profession. He holds a place at the forefront of
this profession as a founding partner of Schulte Roth & Zabel,
and as one of the country’s leading experts on estates and trust
law. At the same time, in his nearly 40 years of practice, Bill has
consistently used his legal skills and energy to advance the cause
of human rights in the U.S. and internationally.
The Lawyers Committee honors Bill tonight for his extraordinary leadership
and commitment to the human rights cause. Bill has served as an active
board member of the Lawyers Committee since 1986, and since 2000 as
the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Working closely with Board
President Tom Bernstein, he has helped guide the Lawyers Committee’s
substantive initiatives, and played a pivotal role in the organization’s
growth and development.
Bill has traveled extensively on the Lawyers Committee’s behalf
to the Philippines, the former Soviet Union, Chile, Romania, Hong
Kong and China. His 1986 trip to Chile, formally on behalf of the
Association of the Bar of the City of New York, was to investigate
the cases of the “disappeared” during General Augusto
Pinochet’s “Dirty War.” When threats were later
made against Carlos Cerda, a courageous Chilean judge who was involved
in these cases, Bill arranged for Judge Cerda to leave the country
and take a teaching position at Harvard Law School.
Bill’s op-ed piece in the New York Times on the case
of the quemados, or “burned ones,” helped draw
international attention to this case of two teenagers who were doused
with gasoline and set on fire by Chilean military officials.
In recent years, Bill has been a steadfast supporter of the newly
formed International Criminal Court. As a Board leader, he has encouraged
the Lawyers Committee’s central involvement in the diplomatic
process leading to the creation of the ICC, and the practical steps
now being taken to make the court an effective institution.
Bill’s work on these and other issues is a logical extension
of his earlier work on rights issues in the United States. He spent
the summer of 1965 in Mississippi as a volunteer civil rights attorney
with the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. In 1967, he authored
the ACLU’s amicus brief in Loving v. Virginia,
a landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation
laws unconstitutional. Two years later he was the lead lawyer in Weiss
v. Gardner, where the Supreme Court held that a loyalty oath
then required by Medicare was unconstitutional. Later, he signed the
brief in Palmore v. Sidoti, in which the Supreme Court held
that a white woman could not be stripped of custody of her child because
she married a black man.
Bill serves on the Boards of amfAR, Doctors of the World, Population
Action International, World Policy Institute, is a trustee of New
School University and New York University, and is a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations. He is also involved with a range of
other educational, cultural and philanthropic institutions, including
active service on the boards of the Lincoln Center Theater and The
Academy of American Poets. Professionally, he is a member of the American
Law Institute, a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate
Counsel and of the American Bar Foundaton, and an Academician of the
International Academy of Estates and Trust Law.
A summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University
and of Harvard Law School, Bill began his legal career at Cleary,
Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton. He joined with Stephen Schulte, Paul
Roth, Dan Shapiro and others to form the firm of Schulte Roth &
Zabel in 1969. The firm now has about 350 lawyers.
He is the author of the book The Rich Die Richer - And You
Can Too and numerous articles on estate planning. He has lectured
extensively around the country on these and related topics. He is
the recipient of the Brandeis University Distinguished Community Service
Award and the Distinguished Service Award from New School University.
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