Court Jew

Nathan Lewin reflects on sixty years on the bar
Nat Lewin, a promising young law student, figured it would be easy to find a summer job. He’d finished his second year in Harvard Law School among the top ten of his class and served as an officer on law review. But no major law firm would take him.
Six decades later, he still remembers the sting. “One of the titans of the Jewish bar at the time told me, ‘Young man, if you intend to practice with a major firm, I suggest that you get a dispensation to work on Saturdays and Jewish holidays from your rabbi.’ ”
Lewin refused to give up Shabbos observance — and he also refused to abandon his dreams. With 60 years of experience behind him, including several game-changing cases for religious Jews across America, he marvels at the changes in the American legal landscape. “Today, you can find at least a minyan of guys wearing yarmulkes in almost every major New York firm,” he says. “And a firm that was off-limits to Jews in my day now has a frum managing partner.”
Nathan Lewin and I are sitting in the living room of his elegant Jerusalem home just outside the Old City. His “Yankee succah” is still up, with its view of Jaffa Gate.
Lewin has long since earned the accolade of “D.C. super-lawyer,” both as an appellate attorney — he has argued 28 cases in the Supreme Court — and as a member of the white-collar criminal defense bar. But for close to 50 years, he has also been the most prominent advocate for Orthodox causes in America. Past clients include the Village of Kiryas Joel in the Supreme Court, Chabad in numerous menorah cases (including a victory in the Supreme Court), and Sholom Rubaskhin.
Nat and I first became friendly when I was writing the biography of Rabbi Moshe Sherer. Rabbi Sherer’s respect for him was almost unlimited, and he consulted with Lewin whenever any major legal issue arose. His name appears repeatedly throughout the Rabbi Sherer biography in connection with a wide array of issues — e.g., the first New York State Get Law; the 1970 hijacking of a TWA jet carrying Rav Yitzchak Hutner ztz”l, rosh yeshivas Chaim Berlin; and protecting shechitah from US Department of Agriculture regulations.
My Isru Chag visit starts as purely social. But soon into our four hours together, I realize that I should pick up pen and paper to record a master raconteur sharing memories of over 60 years in practice. Perhaps it is even my duty to do so as long as he remains too busy with his legal practice to sit down and write his own memoirs — something that his family and friends have long been urging him to do.
Nat returns to his failure to secure a job after his second year at Harvard. “That turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. I saw a notice that Professor Benjamin Kaplan was looking for a summer research assistant, and I got the job. We hit it off very well, and Kaplan eventually prevailed on his law school colleague Paul Bator, a former clerk to Justice John Harlan, to recommend me to Justice Harlan for a clerkship.”
Lewin was only the second Shabbos-observant Jew to clerk for the Supreme Court. The first, who clerked for Justice Felix Frankfurter, was Professor Louis Henkin, son of the renowned posek Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin.
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