Former City Bar President
Proskauer Rose LLP

I could not resist the opportunity to reflect on the enduring strength and accomplishments of our Association and its committees, having had the extraordinary privilege of serving as President of the New York City Bar Association from May 2004 to May 2006. Three areas of focus and an anecdote immediately came to mind.

First, the Association has made an enormous contribution to enhancing and celebrating diversity in the legal profession. Initially, the Association took the important formal steps of establishing committees, obtaining commitments to diversity principles, and securing financial support for establishing the Office of Diversity, the first Bar Association in the country to do so. The Association’s commitment to providing leadership opportunities for diverse members of the Association began much earlier as many Presidents seized the opportunity to appoint women and diverse members to positions as Committee Chairs of important committees.

Another important contribution of the Association has been its sponsorship of and support for legal services for people in need through many programs and initiatives now consolidated under the umbrella of the City Bar Justice Center. Many committees and members as well as our outstanding staff have volunteered their valuable time to the work of the ongoing programs at the Justice Center, which I am confident will endure.

Finally, we can all take great pride in the Association’s long-standing commitment to the rule of law and in particular its courage in speaking out when our government has overstepped its authority and upset the balance between national security and individual rights. And now for the anecdote.

On May 19, 2004, the very first day of my Presidency, a client commitment kept me at my office for an all-day mediation. Late in the morning, I received a call from Executive Director Barbara Opotowsky and General Counsel Alan Rothstein requesting an urgent meeting. I said yes, of course, and met with them and Scott Horton, Chair of the Committee on International Law, an hour or so later at my office during a break in the mediation. I learned that, in an extraordinary development growing out of our criticism of government actions such as the use of torture post-9/11, Scott had received in an anonymous package some classified government documents including a memorandum on the permissible use of torture to various government officials from White House Counsel and later Attorney General Gonzalez, often referred to subsequently as the “Torture Memo.” As cautious lawyers, we decided to determine first whether we could read and disclose the material and quickly obtained favorable advice from the chairs of appropriate committees of the Association. The Gonzalez memo was declassified a few months later and the rest, of course, is history.