NAFUSA members Robert Morgenthau and Robert Fiske have been chosen by the New York Law Journal to be among the 16 outstanding lawyers to receive its Lifetime Achievment Award to be awarded on November 4, 2013. The 16 men and women chosen were deemed to represent those “who over the course of their varied careers have made a profound impact on the law and New York’s legal community.”

Morgenthau, shown left, who was honored by NAFUSA in 2010 upon his retirement as the Manhattan district attorney from 1975 to 2009, served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, 1961-1970. He is the only active member of NAFUSA from the Kennedy Administration. In a letter to Morgenthau dated September 24, 2013, Robert C. Post, Dean of the Yale Law School, said:

 

 

…To say that you have had a profound impact on the law and on the legal community on New York is to understate the case. You have been the spine of law enforcement in the nation’s greatest city. You have pursued justice and the rule of law without regard to the affluence or power of your targets, whether they were mafia dons, state senators, or local slumlords. You have continuously transformed the processes of law enforcement to meet modern challenges establishing sex-crime and consumer-affairs units, tackling internal police corruption, and adding bilingual staff so that more New Yorkers could have access to justice. You have been a mentor to generations of lawyers, many of whom have themselves become judges. Throughout you have been a model of probity, honor, and effectiveness. You have exemplified the law at its best, and for this we all deeply in your debt….

 

Robert B. Fiske Jr., shown left,  served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1976-1980, and served as the chair of the AGAC. He was also the first Whitewater Independent Counsel, appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno. Fiske has been recognized as a leading lawyer in several legal industry publications.  He was named “New York Bet-the Company Litigator of the Year for both 2009 and 2010)” by Best Lawyers. He is presently a senior counsel at Davis, Polk & Wardwell.