Book Description
In Pursuit of Right and Justice chronicles the life of the United States District Court's Judge Edward Weinfeld, from his humble Lower East Side origins to his distinction as one of the nation's most respected federal judges. Judge Edward Weinfeld's personal growth and socio-economic mobility provides an excellent illustration of how Catholics and Jews descended from turn-of-the-century immigrants were assimilated into the mainstream of New York and American life during the course of the twentieth century. Weinfeld left a rich collection of personal papers that William E. Nelson examines, which depict the compromises and sacrifices Weinfeld had to make to attain professional advancement. Weinfeld's jurisprudence remained closely tied to his own personal values and to the historical contexts in which cases came to his court. Nelson aptly describes how Weinfeld strove to avoid making new law. He tried to make decisions on preexisting rules or bedrock legal principles; he achieved just results by searching for and finding facts that called those rules into play. Weinfeld's vision of justice was simultaneously a liberal one that enabled him to develop law that reflected societal change, and an apolitical one that did not rest on contested policy judgments.

About the Author
William E. Nelson served as law clerk to Judge Edward Weinfeld during 1965-66. He later was law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He is currently professor of law at New York University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Federal Judge Edward Weinfeld (1901-1988) lived his entire life within walking distance of the tenement on Manhattan's Lower East Side where he was born. From his birthplace, he could walk four miles northwest to DeWitt Clinton High School, from which he graduated in 1918, a mile northwest to New York University, where he attended law school from 1918 to 1922, a mile south to the state and federal trial courts that he frequented, and a mile north to the state appellate courthouse. The son of European Jewish immigrants, Weinfeld never considered leaving his tightknit community in New York, despite its squalor and anti-Semitism.