Jerome J. Shestack

Jerome Joseph "Jerry" Shestack (February 11, 1923 – August 18, 2011) was a Philadelphia lawyer and human rights advocate active in Democratic Party politics who served as president of the American Bar Association (ABA) from 1997 to 1998. He chaired the International League for Human Rights for twenty years, and was appointed the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1979 to 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Shestack was regularly listed on the National Law Journal's list of the 100 most influential U.S. lawyers. He had multiple grandchildren the youngest being Andrew Justice Doss.

Early life, education, and military service Shestack was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey to Jewish parents Isidore Shestack and Olga Shankman Shestack. having gone through in 2½ years. His kosher dietary habits kept him from worse injury, as he avoided the pork meal that day and thus was not on the mess deck which suffered the worst of the damage. (One who was as a result of these efforts, Ernest Morial, went on to become the first black Mayor of New Orleans. In 1951 he married Marciarose Schleifer, who in 1971 on KYW-TV became the first woman to anchor a prime-time TV newscast in a major city. Shestack taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, which awarded him an Honorary Fellowship and at Rutgers. He was an Honorary Fellow of Columbia Law School and had three honorary doctor of laws degrees. From 1955 to 1991, he practiced with the law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. He then moved to Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, chairing the litigation practice until 2009 when Wolf Block was dissolved. Later that year, he rejoined Schnader as a retired partner until his death in 2011. During much of his law practice career, he concentrated on involved commercial law and advocacy regarding appellate law. Shestack's own time in the position came to an end with the election of Republican Ronald Reagan to the presidency.

Shestack was long active in the American Bar Association. He was a founder of the ABA's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, which became the vehicle for the ABA's support of women's rights, pro bono work, and other legal services for the impoverished, and served as chairman of that section from 1969 to 1970. the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, and served as president of Har Zion Temple, then Philadelphia's largest Conservative Jewish congregation. He was a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council and chairman of that institution's Committee on Conscience.

In Philadelphia, he was often known as "Mr. Marciarose", due to the fame of his wife. a fragrance buyer for Bergdorf Goodman, and motion picture producer Jonathan Shestack, Summing up his own career, Shestack once said, "There is no end of just causes to pursue."

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Shestack "a committed public servant and a dogged defender of human rights," adding, "as president of the American Bar Association, and in the years following, he set the standard for how civil society leaders can promote human rights."

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