VOL. 23, NO. 22	APRIL 24, 1998

olumbia Law School will inaugurate the Wilfred Feinberg Prize, named for one of Columbia’s most esteemed graduates.

  The prize will be given to a Law School student who has done exceptional work in the area of federal courts.

  A reception will be held in Levien Lounge on the 10th floor of William C. Warren Hall, 410 W. 116th St, on Tues., Apr. 28, from 5:30 to 7:00 P.M.

  Former clerks of Judge Wilfred Feinberg, CC ‘40, Law ‘43, a senior circuit judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, established the prize as a tribute to their mentor.

  Feinberg was appointed United States district judge for the Southern District of New York in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

  Five years later he was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where he became chief judge in 1980. He has been a senior circuit judge since 1991.

  In the 36 years that he has served as a federal judge, first on the District Court and then on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Feinberg has been a friend, teacher and adviser to the more than 80 law clerks who have worked for him.

  Feinberg’s former clerks include 19 law professors, including University of Michigan President Lee Bollinger and Columbia Law Professor Gerard Lynch, the former head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; public servants such as Francis Blake, former general counsel of the Environmental Protection Administration, and United States Magistrate-Judge Michael Dolinger, and prominent public interest lawyers, including Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco and Penda Hair of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Washington.

   Lynch said, “I think every single one of Judge Feinberg’s clerks over the years feels that this was the ideal job with which to start a legal career. We all learned an enormous amount by working with an extraordinarily careful, thoughtful and fair judge, but we also gained a lifelong friend and mentor. When a committee of clerks proposed creating this prize, the response was overwhelmingly generous. A prize that tied together the two great institutions to which the Judge devoted so much love—Columbia University and the federal courts—seemed the perfect gift.”