Federal judge Jack Weinstein was known as the definition of a 'judicial activist,' seeking to correct the injustices of the world from his bench and treating every defendant before him with kindness. He died at the age of 99.
Jack Weinstein, a long-serving Brooklyn federal judge known for crafting large, complex settlements, seeking to correct the injustices of the world from his bench and treating every defendant before him with kindness, died Tuesday. He was 99 years old.
U.S. District Judge Weinstein spent more than five decades on the federal bench in Brooklyn, where he became known for his self-styled judicial activism and iconoclastic views. He eschewed the trappings of the judiciary, wearing suits instead of robes, shaking the hands of defendants who came before him and holding some trials around his conference table.
He kept his old suits in a closet in his chambers, offering them to defendants who arrived in jail clothing. When he once ran out of clothes, he asked a deputy U.S. Marshal to take off his pants and give them to a defendant, said John Gleeson, a former federal judge in Brooklyn. “A district judge in the federal court has, I think, the best job, legal job, in the world,” Judge Weinsteinfor the Oral History of Distinguished American Judges, a project of New York University School of Law’s Institute of Judicial Administration. “Seeing real people, dealing with real problems…developing the law, pushing the envelope where required.”
Judge Weinstein’s style drew many critics, especially from conservatives who accused him of legislating from the bench. A close colleague, the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, once wrote that Judge Weinstein used the bench as a “bully pulpit.” “Whatever the definition of ‘judicial activism,’ he is the best, most convincing example,” Mr. Feinberg wrote.
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