Columbia Law School Professor Urged Imprisonment For Lynne Stewart

A Columbia Law School faculty member named Robert D. Sack recently wrote the legal decision that authorized and urged the immediate imprisonment of a 70-year old woman human rights lawyer named Lynne Stewart--for the act of photocopying and mailing a press release for one of her legal clients.

Sack, the son of Park Slope rabbi Eugene Sack, was the Columbia University Law School Commencement speaker in 2007. In his May 17, 2007 speech,Sack confessed the following:

"My father was a reform rabbi with a pulpit in Park Slope Brooklyn...

"...It would be foolish to think that which judge happens to sit on your panel never matters. Sometimes it does...

"I took a job with Patterson, Belknap & Webb here in New York. A partner of the firm, later my mentor, Bob Potter, greeted me at the door. He said, `The most fun around her is representing The Wall Street Journal.' And I said--`Yes. I'll do that.' That's how I got into media law."

Besides sitting on the U.S. federal judiciary bench (having been appointed by Bill Clinton in the 1990s), Columbia Law School Professor Sack has also sat next to two top Dow Jones Company executives--Stuart Karle and James Ottaway Jr.--while serving as a board member of the William F. Kerby and Robert S. Potter Fund.

Coincidentally, Lynne Stewart was the lawyer for the still-imprisoned 1968 Columbia Strike Leader David Gilbert during the 1980s; and the Obama Administration Justice Department which decided to push for Stewart's imprisonment in the Columbia Law School faculty member's federal courtroom is headed by former Columbia University Trustee Eric Holder.