Fall Public Service Awards
Stanford Law School’s Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law annually honors two outstanding public interest attorneys. The Fall Public Service Awards reception is the Levin Center’s biggest event of the year. We invite alumni, faculty, students, and staff to join us for a formal dinner reception honoring the award recipients.
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the community, national, or international level. Each spring we invite nominations for the two awards:
Nomination Guidelines for the Stanford Law School National Public Service AwardNomination Guidelines for the Stanford Law School Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award
Please scroll down to see the list of current and past award recipients.
2017 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s dinner will be held on Tuesday, October 17, 2017 at the Paul Brest Hall in Munger Graduate Residence. Stanford Law School faculty, students, staff, and alumni receive complimentary admission upon confirmed registration. All guests must RSVP.
John Levin, MA ’70/JD ’73
National Public Service Award Recipient
John Levin is Chairman of Folger Levin LLP. His practice focuses on transactions and strategic advice for businesses, high net worth families and individuals, and non-profit organizations.
John received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1973. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1969 and a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University in 1970. Following law school, John served for one year as law clerk to Associate Justice Stanley Mosk of the Supreme Court of California. In 1978, John co-founded Folger & Levin and served as its chairman and managing partner for nearly 30 years. He has been a member of the California Bar since 1973.
John is active in a wide range of community activities and has served on numerous boards. In 2009 he completed a ten year term as a Trustee of Stanford University, the last five years as Vice-Chair of the Board. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of Stanford Health Care, a member of the Board of Directors of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and served as Convening Co-Chair of the Campaign for Stanford Medicine. In 2015, Stanford awarded John its Gold Spike, the University’s highest recognition of volunteer leadership service. In 2016, the Stanford School of Medicine awarded John the Dean’s Medal, its highest honor. He is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of California, a founding member of the Board of Trustees of Coaching Corps and a member of the National Advisory Board of the Haas Center for Public Service. John has been active in the leadership of Stanford Law School, serving as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council, Co-Chair of the Campaign for Stanford Law School and a member of the Executive Committee of the school’s Board of Visitors. With his wife Terry, John established The John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. John has also served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Claude and Louise Rosenberg, Jr. Family Foundation, Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Marin Country Day School, a member of the Board of Trustees of Marin Academy, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Little School, a member of the Advisory Board of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, a member of Harvard University’s Committee on University Resources and a member of the Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Group of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Tamika Butler, JD ’09
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Tamika Butler serves as the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, a non-profit organization that addresses social and racial equity, and wellness, by building parks and gardens in park-poor communities across Greater Los Angeles.
Tamika has a diverse background in law, community organizing and nonprofit leadership. Recently she was the Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Prior to leading LACBC, Tamika was the Director of Social Change Strategies at Liberty Hill Foundation, and worked at Young Invincibles as the California Director. She transitioned to policy work after litigating for three years as an employment lawyer at Legal Aid At Work (formerly known as the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center).
Tamika previously served as the co-chair of the National Center for Lesbian Rights Board of Directors, serves as the Institute Co-Director of the New Leaders Council – Los Angeles, is a board member of both Lambda Literary Foundation and T.R.U.S.T. South LA, and is an advisory board member for the Legal Aid at Work’s Fair Play for Girls in Sports program.
Tamika received her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and received her B.A. in Psychology and B.S. in Sociology in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
2016 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s dinner was held on Monday, October 10, 2016 at the Paul Brest Hall in Munger Graduate Residence.
The Honorable Thomas E. Perez
National Public Service Award Recipient
Thomas E. Perez, the nation’s 26th secretary of labor, has dedicated his entire career to making good on the promise of opportunity for all. A civil rights lawyer by training, Secretary Perez leads the U.S. Department of Labor in its mission of giving all Americans the chance to get ahead and stay ahead.
Under Secretary Perez’s leadership, priorities for the department include ensuring a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work through continued efforts to raise the minimum wage, expand overtime protections, and by being smarter and more strategic in the department’s enforcement of federal law. Secretary Perez strives every day to ensure that Americans return home from their jobs safe and healthy. Perez has made job training and workforce development a focal point of his tenure. With historic investments in community colleges and apprenticeships and the department’s implementation of the bipartisan Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, he is committed to connecting ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs. His efforts to protect Americans’ hard-earned retirement savings include a proposed new rule to require financial advisers to put their customers’ best interest first. Additionally, Perez has kept up the drumbeat on state and local progress to expand access to paid leave. He also helps ensure that people with disabilities and veterans have access to employment opportunities and other supports to help them succeed.
During his tenure, Secretary Perez has collaborated with a wide variety of stakeholders – including private-sector employers, labor unions, nonprofits and foundations – to build a broad coalition and forge lasting partnerships to address inequality and create shared prosperity. Notably, President Obama tapped Secretary Perez to assist with a monthslong dispute at the West Coast ports, where he helped broker a deal between labor and management that enabled the ports to resume operations. He has earned a reputation for listening to all sides and crafting pragmatic solutions rooted in progressive values.
He has worked at all levels of government to move our country forward on a host of fundamental issues of fairness. Prior to his swearing in as secretary of labor, Secretary Perez served as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he fought to protect voting rights, ensure that communities have effective and democratically accountable policing, crack down on discriminatory lending and housing, and expand opportunity for marginalized communities. As director of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, he helped ensure that people of all backgrounds could access quality, affordable health care. Perez also tackled civil rights, criminal justice and constitutional issues as a special counselor for Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Secretary Perez also served the people of Maryland in a variety of roles. He was the first Latino elected to the Montgomery County Council, where he served from 2002 to 2006. Later, as secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation from 2007 to 2009, he helped implement the country’s first living wage law and spearheaded a package of reforms to address the foreclosure crisis.
The son of Dominican immigrants, Secretary Perez was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. Public service was the family business. Perez’s maternal grandfather was the ambassador to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the 1930s, until he spoke out against his home country’s brutal dictator and was declared non grata. Perez’s father, a physician, served in the U.S. Army and worked for many years at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Buffalo.
A graduate of Brown University and Harvard University, Perez has taught law and public health at universities in Maryland and the District of Columbia. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Ann Marie Staudenmaier, and their three children. An avid runner and athlete, he coaches his children’s basketball and baseball teams. He credits his unrelenting optimism to being a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan.
Salena Copeland, JD ’07
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Salena Copeland is the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Association of California (LAAC) and spends much of her time coordinating statewide legislative and administrative advocacy, while also supervising a small staff who work to support the entire Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) legal aid community through trainings, online coordination and resource-sharing, and member discounts. Her biggest recent success is as a major organizer in the effort to increase the Equal Access Fund, a fund that supports nearly 100 California legal nonprofits. The efforts resulted in a $5 million increase in the funds at the same time LAAC and others were pushing for the extension or repeal of a sunset on a separate $7-9 million/year fund. That campaign was also successful.
Salena, a Texan by birth, but Californian by choice, is a 2007 graduate of Stanford Law School, a member of the State Bar of California Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, a co-chair of the California Commission on Access to Justice Rural Task Force, a member of the Amicus Committee of the Access Commission, an active member of the Bench Bar Coalition, and the 2010 recipient of the Bench Bar Coalition Legal Services Provider of the Year Award. She also serves on a number of statewide planning committees dedicated to improving access to justice for low and moderate-income Californians, including the Campaign for Justice. She lives in the East Bay with her partner, Matthew Liebman (SLS JD ’06), and their children.
2015 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s dinner was held on Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at the Paul Brest Hall in Munger Graduate Residence.
The Honorable Myron H. Thompson
National Public Service Award Recipient
Judge Myron H. Thompson is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. 1969) and Yale Law School (J.D. 1972). He was nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in September 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Judge Thompson served as Chief Judge from 1991 to 1998.
Judge Thompson served as Assistant Attorney General of Alabama from 1972 to 1974. He was the first African-American Assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama, the first African-American bar examiner for the State, and the second African-American federal judge in the State. Judge Thompson was in private practice from 1974 until 1980. He was the Founding Director and Board Chairman of the Alabama Legal Services Corporation.
Judge Thompson has contributed to the development of legal scholarship by serving as Jurist in Residence at Pace Law School in 2012, delivering the Dean’s Lecture at Yale Law School in 2004, and serving as a New York University Law School Scholar in Residence in 1998 and 1999. He was the Eleventh Circuit’s District Judge Representative on the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2007 through 2011 and was chair of the District Judges Representatives to the Conference from 2010 through 2011.
In 2013, Judge Thompson was awarded the Thurgood Marshall Award by the National Bar Association’s Judicial Council in recognition of his “personal contributions and extraordinary commitment to the advancement of civil rights and for being a role model for members of the bench and bar.” He received the 2005 Mark De Wolfe Howe Award from the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review “for his Unyielding Commitment to Advancing the Personal Freedoms and Human Dignities of the American People.” In 2008 he received the Judge Jane M. Bolin Service Award from the Yale Law School BLSA in recognition of his “Outstanding Dedication and Support to Yale BLSA and Contributions to the Legal Community.” In April 2009 he received the Ernestine Sapp Justice Award from Thomas Goode Jones Law School, as well as an Honoree Award from the Touro Law School BLSA. In May 2010, Thomas Goode Jones Law School awarded him an honorary J.D. degree.
Brian L. Blalock JD ’07
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Brian L. Blalock is a staff attorney and director of the Youth Justice Project (YJP) at Bay Area Legal Aid. YJP provides legal representation and does systemic advocacy on issues related to youth who are under twenty-five years old. It aims to create a civil legal support network for youth throughout the Bay area through a strong presence in the community and collaboration with system partners with a focus on better supporting vulnerable and disconnected youth. Brian’s current projects at YJP include working with homeless young adults in reconnecting to appropriate systems and services and providing comprehensive civil legal services to youth in the dependency or delinquency system with focused initiatives working with trafficked and LGBT youth.
At YJP, Brian has also worked on a number of systemic issues, such as the statewide implementation of extended foster care, funding and services parity for delinquency-involved foster youth, and better supports for relative caregivers. He has worked on legislation, including most recently AB 2454, which allows youth to re-enter foster care after 18 if they are homeless, and the creation and implementation of the Approved Relative Caregiver Funding Option Program (ARC), a new funding entitlement for foster youth who are not federally eligible and are placed with relatives.
In 2012, Brian was named as one of the fifty California Lawyers on the Fast Track by The Recorder to celebrate young lawyers who have demonstrated significant leadership and achievement. In 2014, he received an Ebby award, given by the East Bay Children’s Law Office to honor individuals who have been instrumental in implementing new laws and policies affecting foster youth in California.
Brian started his legal career as a Skadden fellow at BayLegal, where he founded the Youth Justice Project. Before becoming a lawyer, Brian worked as a religious affairs consultant, a fight trainer, and a public school teacher in the south Bronx. He has graduate degrees from Columbia and Harvard and a law degree from Stanford Law School.
2014 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s dinner was held on Monday, October 6, 2014 at the Paul Brest Hall in Munger Graduate Residence.
Marielena Hincapié
National Public Service Award Recipient
Marielena Hincapié is the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, the main organization dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of low-income immigrants in the U.S. Under her executive leadership, NILC has grown to be one of the premier immigrants’ rights organizations, strategically using a combination of litigation, policy, communications, and alliance-building strategies to effect social change. Ms. Hincapié is highly respected for her legal and political strategies and is seen as a bridge builder within the immigrants’ rights field as well as across broader social justice sectors.
Fully bilingual and bicultural, Ms. Hincapié serves as a resource and is often interviewed by media outlets such as Univisión, Telemundo, CNN en Español, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She also is a frequent lecturer at national and international conferences, addressing issues of migration, and she works closely with emerging leaders in the social justice movement. Ms. Hincapié began her tenure at NILC in 2000 as a staff attorney leading the organization’s labor and employment program. During that time, she successfully litigated law reform and impact-litigation cases dealing with the intersection of immigration laws and employment/labor laws. She then served as NILC’s director of programs from 2004 to 2008, after which she became executive director.
Before joining NILC, Ms. Hincapié worked for the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco’s Employment Law Center, where she founded the Center’s Immigrant Workers’ Rights Project. She holds a juris doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law, served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration, and is currently a member of the Jobs with Justice and Welcome.US boards of directors.
Ms. Hincapié immigrated as a child from Medellín, Colombia, to Central Falls, Rhode Island. She is the youngest of 10 children.
Catherine Crump, JD ’04
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Catherine Crump is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley Law. An experienced litigator specializing in constitutional matters, she has represented a broad range of clients seeking to vindicate their First and Fourth Amendment rights. She also has extensive experience litigating to compel the disclosure of government records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Professor Crump’s primary interest is the impact of new technologies on civil liberties. Representative matters include serving as counsel in the ACLU’s challenge to the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ call records; representing artists, media outlets and others challenging a federal internet censorship law, and representing a variety of clients seeking to invalidate the government’s policy of conducting suspicionless searches of laptops and other electronic devices at the international border.
Prior to coming to Berkeley, Professor Crump served as a staff attorney at the ACLU for nearly nine years. Before that, she was a law clerk for Judge M. Margaret McKeown at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
2013 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s dinner was held on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at the Graduate School of Business’ Schwab Residential Center. Pictured, left to right, are Professor Pam Karlan; Dean M. Elizabeth Magill; Roberta Kaplan; Jennifer Chang Newell, JD ’03; Terry Levin, BA ’74, MA ’81; and John Levin, MA ’70, JD ’73.
Roberta Kaplan and Professor Pam Karlan
National Public Service Award recipients for their work as co-counsel representing Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor.
Roberta Kaplan
A partner in the Litigation Department at Paul Weiss, Roberta (Robbie) Kaplan has been described as a “powerhouse corporate litigator” and “pressure junkie” who “thrives on looking at the big picture” whether “in the gay-marriage legal fight or high-profile corporate scandals.” Robbie has been selected as one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers,” as one of “The 500 Leading Lawyers,” andas one of the top “40 Under 40” lawyers in the United States.
Robbie successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court case that may be the most significant civil rights decision of our time. In Windsor, the nation’s highest court ruled that a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violated the U.S. Constitution by barring legally married same-sex couples from enjoying the wide-ranging benefits of marriage conferred under federal law.
Robbie has published on a variety of legal topics, including the chapter, “Investigating the Case” in Commercial Litigation in New York State Courts, as well as the chapter, “Interplay Between Commercial Litigation and Criminal Proceedings” in Commercial Litigation in the Federal Circuit Courts. She also recently published an article entitled “Proof vs. Prejudice” in 37 N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change (2013). While serving as a senior law clerk to then Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, Robbie assisted Judge Kaye in connection with a number of articles, including State Courts at the Dawn of a New Century: Common Law Courts Reading Statutes and Constitutions, 70 NYU L Rev 1 35 (April 1995). Robbie also clerked for Judge Mark L. Wolf of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Robbie’s legal work has been honored by a number of organizations, including the New York City Council, the Family Equality Council, and the National Organization for Women. In 2011, she was honored as the distinguished alumna of the year by the Columbia Law School Women’s Association. She has also received the New York County Lawyers’ Association’s William Nelson Cromwell Award.
Robbie currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the New York County Lawyers’ Association. She served on New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s Task Force on Commercial Litigation in the 21st Century and continues to serve on The Commercial Division Advisory Council.
Pam Karlan
A productive scholar and award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is also co-director of the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles. She also writes a column on the Supreme Court and legal issues for the Boston Review.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and the American Law Institute and serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Constitution Society.
Jennifer Chang Newell, JD ’03
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award recipient
Jennifer Chang Newell is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she first began as a Skadden Fellow in 2004. Her practice includes challenging state and local anti-immigrant laws and policies, protecting the constitutional rights of immigrants to judicial review and due process, and combating discrimination and retaliation against immigrants. Newell is counsel in Arizona DREAM Act Coalition v. Brewer, a case brought by the ACLU and its coalition partners challenging Arizona’s decision to deny driver’s licenses to young immigrant “DREAMers” granted federal permission to live and work in the United States. Newell is also counsel in cases raising Supremacy Clause challenges to several municipal immigration ordinances across the country, including in Fremont, Nebraska; Hazleton, Pennyslvania; and Farmers Branch, Texas. Newell’s other cases have included litigation invalidating the Department of Homeland Security regulation concerning Social Security Administration “no-match” letters, litigation upholding the validity of the San Francisco Municipal ID Ordinance, litigation challenging the U.S. government’s torture of noncitizen detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan; and litigation protecting the rights of Salvadoran asylum seekers in immigration detention and processing. Prior to joining the ACLU, Newell was a law clerk to Judge Marsha Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
2012 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
This year’s awards dinner was held on Thursday, October 11, 2012 at the Paul Brest Hall in Munger Graduate Residence. Pictured are Nancy Rubin, Judge Patricia Wald, Dean Elizabeth Magill, Associate Dean for Public Service and Public Interest Law Diane Chin, David Sapp, JD ’05, Miles Rubin, JD ’52, BA ’50, and Levin Center Executive Director Anna Wang.
The Honorable Patricia M. Wald
National Public Service Award Recipient
Judge Patricia M. Wald has been a remarkable role model for a generation of public interest lawyers. She graduated from Connecticut College in 1948 and earned her law degree from Yale Law School in 1951. Upon graduation, she served as a clerk for Judge Jerome Frank of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the only woman to clerk on that Circuit that year. She later went to work at Arnold and Porter in Washington, DC before leaving the firm after about a year to join her Navy JAG husband, Robert, who had been assigned to duty in Norfolk. For almost a decade, Judge Wald stayed at home, devoting her energies to launching the lives of the couple’s five children and doing occasional legal research and writing. When she returned to the practice of law in the sixties, she worked in such diverse fields as criminal justice, juvenile law, mental disability law, drug abuse, poverty and public interest law, administrative law, constitutional law, judicial process, and women and the law. Judge Wald worked at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Criminal Justice, Washington D.C.’s Neighborhood Legal Services Program, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Mental Health Law Project, among others. She served in the Carter administration as Assistant Attorney General before being appointed as the first woman to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she served as chief judge from 1986 until 1991. After 20 years on the federal bench, Judge Wald accepted an appointment to serve as a judge for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She later served as a member of the Iraq Intelligence Commission. In addition to her exceptional career as a jurist, she has taken on countless leadership roles in professional associations, national commissions and legal reform efforts in the United States and abroad.
David Sapp, JD ‘05
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
David Sapp joined the ACLU of Southern California in 2009 as a staff attorney. During his tenure Mr. Sapp has focused primarily on education and juvenile justice issues. He worked on Casey A. v. Gundry, a case regarding failure of a juvenile probation camp to provide minimally adequate education and rehabilitation services to detained youth. He served as counsel in the Reed v. State of California, which addressed the inequitable distribution of teacher layoffs in inner city schools in Los Angeles, and Doe v. State of California, which focused on the State’s failure to ensure districts provide a free public education system as required by the California Constitution. Prior to joining the ACLU, David clerked for the Honorable Raymond C. Fisher on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was a Skadden Fellow at Advocates for Children’s Services in Durham, North Carolina, where he represented students in school discipline and special education proceedings. He began his legal career clerking for the Honorable Myron H. Thompson on the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
2011 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
Pictured are Associate Dean Diane Chin; Sharon Terman, JD ’04; Vernon Jordan; Terry Levin, BA ’74, MA ’81; John Levin, MA ’70, JD ’73; and Dean Larry Kramer.
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
National Public Service Award Recipient
Stanford Law School is delighted to honor Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. for his lifetime of public service and will present him with the 2011 National Public Service Award. Over the course of his career, Mr. Jordan has been a leader in the civil rights movement, starting from shortly after graduating from law school when he worked to empower African Americans in the South via community organizing and voter registration drives, including serving on the legal team that desegregated the University of Georgia. He later led several major organizations and successfully fundraised to finance black colleges, job training programs, early childhood education, and other causes dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty. Mr. Jordan has served as president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, Inc.; executive director of the United Negro College Fund, Inc.; director of the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council; attorney-consultant at the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity; assistant to the executive director of the Southern Regional Council; Georgia field director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and as an attorney in private practice in Arkansas and Georgia. He also recently served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, of the United States Institute of Peace.
He is currently a partner at the investment firm of Lazard Frere & Company in New York and serves as Senior Managing Director of Lazard Group LLC. Mr. Jordan is also Of Counsel/Senior Counsel at Akin Gump.
Mr. Jordan’s presidential appointments include: the President’s Advisory Committee for the Points of Light Initiative Foundation; the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on South Africa; the Advisory Council on Social Security; and the Presidential Clemency Board.
Watch Mr. Jordan’s speech here.
Sharon Terman, JD ’04
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Sharon Terman, JD ’04 is senior staff attorney and director of the Work and Family Project at the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center of San Francisco. As the 2011 Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award recipient, Ms. Terman is being recognized for her pioneering work in enforcing family leave laws, both the Federal Family Medical Leave Act and California’s own family leave law, which significantly expands workers’ rights beyond the federal statute. She assists poor women, many of whom are immigrants and often undocumented, who face illegal treatment at work. Ms. Terman tackles pregnancy discrimination, violations of family and medical leave laws, domestic violence in the workplace, and harassment.
Watch Ms. Terman’s speech here.
2010 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
Pictured are Dean Larry Kramer; Levin Center Executive Director Anna Wang; Miles Rubin, JD ’52, BA ’50; John Levin, MA ’70, JD ’73; Bryan Stevenson; Lynne Echenberg, JD ’02; Associate Dean Diane Chin; Todd Rubin; and Terry Levin, BA ’74, MA ’81.
Bryan Stevenson
National Public Service Award Recipient
Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), was honored for his extraordinary work securing relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, advocating for poor people, and developing community-based reform litigation aimed at improving the administration of criminal justice. Stevenson has been representing capital defendants and death row prisoners in the Deep South since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989, he has been executive director of the EJI, a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States.
Lynne Echenberg, JD ’02
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Lynne Echenberg is creator and director of the Next Generation Center (NGC) in the Bronx, New York. She has devoted her legal career to helping at-risk youth, particularly those aging out of the foster care system. The NGC provides youth leadership and life skills training, technology instruction, job readiness and job development services, educational guidance and tutoring, legal advocacy, housing assistance, creative and visual arts, and recreation to young people, ages fourteen to twenty-four.
2009 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
Debo P. Adegbile
National Public Service Award Recipient
Debo P. Adegbile is the Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where he oversees the legal program and supervises the legal staff in the areas of Economic and Criminal Justice, Education, and Political Participation, while remaining actively engaged in litigation and advocacy including in a number of recent cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Corene Kendrick, JD ’03
Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Corene Kendrick, JD ’03, is a Staff Attorney at the Youth Law Center (YLC) in San Francisco, a nonprofit legal organization that advocates for the rights of children in foster care and juvenile justice systems across the country.
2008 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
Shannon Price Minter
National Public Service Award Recipient
Shannon Price Minter is the Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), one of the nation’s leading advocacy organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Julia R. Wilson ’98
Inaugural Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award Recipient
Julia R. Wilson currently serves as the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Association of California (LAAC) and the Public Interest Clearinghouse (PIC). As Executive Director of the sister organizations, she is responsible for leading statewide advocacy eff orts on behalf of the legal services delivery system, undertaking multiple statewide strategic planning initiatives, and serving as the legal services community’s liaison to key access to justice partners.
Press Release
2007 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Alumni Public Service Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
David Doniger
National Public Service Award Recipient
David Doniger is policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Climate Center, where he helps to develop environmental and energy policies that reduce the threat of global warming and enhance America’s energy security. David also leads NRDC’s work to complete the phase-out of chemicals that deplete the earth’s protective ozone layer.
Christopher Ho, JD ’87
Alumni Public Service Award Recipient
Christopher Ho, JD ’87 is a senior staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center (“LAS-ELC”) in San Francisco, where he litigates cases in defense of the employment rights of historically subordinated communities. His primary focus for over a decade has been on efforts to challenge and rectify workplace practices that disproportionately impact national origin minorities, particularly recent immigrants.
Press Release
2006 Recipients
The National Public Service Award is designated for an attorney whose work on behalf of the public has had national impact, and the Alumni Public Service Award will be given annually to a Stanford Law School alumnus/a who has similarly engaged in public service and had a significant impact on the nation or community.
William P. Quigley
National Public Service Award Recipient
Quigley, an active public interest lawyer since 1977, served as General Counsel for the ACLU of Louisiana for over 15 years. Quigley has served as an advisor on human and civil rights to Human Rights Watch USA and Amnesty International USA. In 2003, he was named the Pope Paul VI National Teacher of Peace by Pax Christi USA; in 2004 he received the SALT Teaching Award presented by the Society of American Law Teachers; and in 2006, he received the Camille Gravel Civil Pro Bono Award from the Federal Bar Association New Orleans Chapter. Quigley is also an active volunteer lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Christa Gannon, JD ’97
Alumni Public Service Award Recipient
Christa Gannon, JD ’97 was selected as one of ten people in the United States to receive funding from the George Soros Foundation to develop an innovative criminal justice program. With this seed funding Gannon started FLY. FLY strives to reduce juvenile crime and incarceration through legal education, mentoring and leadership training. By providing at-risk and disadvantaged youth with vital information regarding the decisions they make in their lives, FLY has helped nearly 10,000 youth avoid the criminal justice system and transform from delinquent youth into positive community leaders. In recognition of Gannon’s abilities, in the fall of 2000, she was selected by the National Law-Related Education Consortium to be California’s State Coordinator of Law-Related Education. In this capacity she acts as the expert for the State of California supporting individuals and organizations that want to start law-related education projects. Gannon is the youngest state coordinator in the country.