Lewin, Nathan
LEWIN, NATHAN
LEWIN, NATHAN (1936– ), one of America's most highly acclaimed federal trial and appellate court litigators and the Orthodox Jewish community's foremost advocate on legal and legislative issues since the 1970s. Lewin was born in Lodz, Poland, and arrived in the United States, via Japan, in 1941. His grandfather was the chief rabbi of Rzeszow while serving as a member of the Polish legislature (Sejm), and his father, Dr. Isaac Lewin, was the youngest member of the Lodz City Council in pre-war Poland, as well as a renowned activist in efforts to rescue European Jewry from the Holocaust.
Prior to entering private practice, Lewin held a series of high-level positions in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Lewin argued 12 cases in the United States Supreme Court while in government service and another 15 in private practice. He was law clerk to Chief Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and to Associate Justice John M. Harlan of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Lewin graduated summa cum laude from Yeshiva College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was treasurer of the Harvard Law Review. He taught at major national American law schools and regularly contributed to leading publications on constitutional issues. Lewin was involved in the work of a broad array of significant Jewish organizations including serving as president of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington (1982–1984); as the national vice president for more than 30 years of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (colpa), and as president of the American Section of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists from 1991 to 1997.
Lewin was the principal architect of the principle that the right of members of religious minorities to a reasonable accommodation of their religious practices is an aspect of freedom of religion. Through his efforts, which included litigation, filing amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the Orthodox community and drafting proposed legislation and administrative regulations, that notion now ordinarily permits observant Jews to fully participate in American society, even when their religious practices conflict with standard societal practices. In addition to the substantive results realized by the religious Jewish community, his expertise and commitment are generally credited with enabling the Orthodox community to pursue its own interests in its own way, without having to rely on secular Jewish advocates and groups with different perspectives.
Thus, Lewin brought lawsuits on behalf of Sabbath observers who were discriminated against in private employment because of the restrictions on their availability; on behalf of military chaplains who were denied the right to wear religiously motivated beards; on behalf of an Air Force psychologist who was denied the right to wear a yarmulke while on duty; and on behalf of Jewish prisoners who were denied kosher food. He also drafted the provision of the federal Civil Rights Act enacted in 1972 that protects religious observances of private employees, the provision of federal law that enables federal employees to observe religious holidays without financial penalty, the provision of New York's Domestic Relations Law that conditions the issuance of a civil divorce on removal of barriers to remarriage, such as the delivery or acceptance of a Jewish religious divorce, and the provision of federal law that entitles servicemen to wear yarmulkes. He also drafted amicus curiae briefs in dozens of cases in the United States Supreme Court involving these and related issues.
Lewin defended the process of kosher slaughter in court and the constitutionality of New Jersey's and New York's kosher enforcement law. He has also defended against constitutional challenge the right of communities in New Jersey and New York to construct an eruv. He also won a federal appeal entitling the Young Israel of Bal Harbour, Florida, to conduct services, over the opposition of local zoning authorities.
Lewin won in the Supreme Court the right of Lubavitch to maintain a Ḥanukkah menorah on public property, and was the attorney for the Satmar community of *Kiryas Joel in defense of a law creating a special public school district for handicapped children in that community. Lewin also represented the Williamsburg ḥasidic community in the Supreme Court in its constitutional challenge in 1976 to a racially conscious legislative reapportionment, urging a rule of constitutional law that the Supreme Court accepted 20 years later.
Lewin initiated the first lawsuit under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act of 1992, giving American citizens who are the victims of terror a right to collect damages from those responsible for terrorist acts, which served as the basis for the legal liability of financers of terror. He also secured the right of an Egyptian Jewish family to sue Coca-Cola for occupying and assuming ownership of the family's property and buildings in Cairo nationalized during the Nasser regime.
Apart from his Jewish-oriented activities, Lewin is also known for his representation of Attorney General Edwin Meese, former President Richard M. Nixon, and various United States congressmen.
[Dennis Rapps (2nd ed.)]