List of Jewish American jurists

This is a list of famous Jewish American jurists.

For other famous Jewish Americans, see Lists of American Jews.

Supreme Court of the United States

• Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1916–1939
• Stephen G. Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1994–present
• Benjamin N. Cardozo, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1932–1938
• Abe Fortas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1965–1969
• Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1939–1962
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1993–present
• Arthur J. Goldberg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1962–1965
• Elena Kagan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 2010-present

Activists and scholars

• Gloria Allred (1941–), lawyer and radio talk show host^[1]
• Eric Brown, first Jewish Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, 2010
• Thomas Buergenthal, U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice
• Alan Dershowitz, U.S. lawyer, professor at Harvard Law School, popular author
• Arthur Lehman Goodhart, jurist^[2]
• Jack Greenberg, lawyer for the Brown v. Board of Education case, worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and assisted establishing the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) with Pete Tijerina^[3][4][5][6]
• Julius Hoffman, U.S. attorney and judge, achieved notoriety for his role in the Chicago Seven trial
• Judith Kaye, first female Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals
• Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit judge and popular essayist ^[7]
• William Kunstler, U.S. lawyer famous for defending controversial "radical" clients such as the "Chicago Seven" protesters of the 1968 Democratic National Convention^[8]
• Samuel Leibowitz, lawyer, defender of the Scottsboro Boys^[9]
• Edward Levi, U.S. Attorney General, 1975–77
• Nathan Lewin, prominent Jewish advocate; argued many first amendment, establishment clause-related cases before the Supreme Court
• Martin Lipton, U.S. leading business lawyer in corporate mergers
• Julian Mack, early 20th-century United States Circuit Court of Appeals Judge^[10][11]
• Stanley Mosk, U.S. jurist, California Supreme Court Justice and Attorney General
• Peter Neufeld, Innocence Project
• Richard Posner, Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School; former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project; defense lawyer for O.J. Simpson^[12]
• Eliot Spitzer, former governor and former Attorney General of New York
• Horace Stern, first Jewish justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; later elevated to Chief Justice. Founded the law firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen
• Laurence H. Tribe, Professor of Law, Harvard University
• Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law, UCLA

Media figures

• Ben Brafman, attorney for Sean Combs and Michael Jackson
• Roy Cohn, chief attorney for Joseph McCarthy
• Ed Fagan, reparations lawyer, disbarred in New York^[13] and New Jersey for stealing money from Holocaust survivors..^[14]
• Bertram Fields (1929–), Harvard-trained lawyer, famous for his work in the field of entertainment law^[1]
• Ed Koch, judge on The People's Court; former mayor of New York
• Scooter Libby, former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff
• Robert Shapiro, U.S. lawyer, known for the trial of O.J. Simpson
• Jerry Sheindlin, television judge, husband of Judith Sheindlin, former New York State Supreme Court justice
• Judith Sheindlin, former New York family court judge, host of Judge Judy
• Joseph Wapner, judge on The People's Court

Footnotes