Laurence Silberman facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Laurence Silberman
Chair of the Iraq Intelligence Commission
In office February 6, 2004 – March 31, 2005 Served with Chuck Robb
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review
In office June 18, 1996 – May 18, 2003
Nominated by	William Rehnquist
Preceded by	Robert W. Warren
Succeeded by	Ralph K. Winter Jr.
Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
In office November 1, 2000 – October 2, 2022
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
In office October 28, 1985 – November 1, 2000
Nominated by	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Seat established by 98 Stat. 333
Succeeded by	Brett Kavanaugh
United States Ambassador to Yugoslavia
In office May 8, 1975 – December 26, 1976
President	Gerald Ford
Preceded by	Malcolm Toon
Succeeded by	Lawrence Eagleburger
14th United States Deputy Attorney General
In office January 20, 1974 – April 6, 1975
President	Richard Nixon Gerald Ford
Preceded by	William Ruckelshaus
Succeeded by	Harold R. Tyler, Jr.
United States Under Secretary of Labor
In office 1970–1973
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	James Day Hodgson
Succeeded by	Richard F. Schubert
United States Solicitor of Labor
In office 1969–1970
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Charles Donahue
Succeeded by	Peter Nash
Personal details
Born	Laurence Hirsch Silberman October 12, 1935 York, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	October 2, 2022(2022-10-02) (aged 86) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouses	Ricky Gaull Patricia Winn
Children	3, including Robert
Education	Dartmouth College (BA) Harvard University (LLB)

Silberman (right) with President George W. Bush and Chuck Robb announcing the formation of the Iraq Intelligence Commission in 2004

Silberman and President George W. Bush in 2008

Laurence Hirsch Silberman (October 12, 1935 – October 2, 2022) was an American lawyer, diplomat, jurist, and government official who served as a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1985 until his death in 2022. He was appointed in October 1985 by Ronald Reagan and took senior status on November 1, 2000. On June 11, 2008, George W. Bush awarded Silberman the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early life and education

Born to a Jewish family in York, Pennsylvania, Silberman graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1957. He served six months of active duty in the U.S. Army (five and a half years reserve) and attended the Harvard Law School, graduating in 1961 with a Bachelor of Laws degree.

Career

Silberman worked in the private sector as a partner at the law firms Moore, Silberman & Schulze in Honolulu and Morrison & Foerster and Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. He also served as Executive Vice President of Crocker National Bank in San Francisco. His government service included stints as an attorney in the National Labor Relations Board's appellate section, as Solicitor of Labor from 1969 to 1970, and as Undersecretary of Labor from 1970 to 1973. As Solicitor, he was largely responsible for developing the requirement of goals and timetables as an enforcement device for the affirmative action order. He subsequently regretted his stance, writing, "Our use of numerical standards in pursuit of equal opportunity has led to the very quotas guaranteeing equal results that we initially wished to avoid."

He also led the development of legislation to implement "final offer selection" as a means of resolving labor disputes. As Undersecretary, he repeatedly clashed with Charles "Chuck" Colson and tendered his resignation in order to compel the hiring of a black regional director in New York in 1972.

President Richard Nixon nominated Silberman to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States in January 1974. Silberman was tasked with reviewing J. Edgar Hoover's secret files, which he described as "the single worst experience of my long governmental service". Silberman stated that "this country – and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – would be well served if [Hoover's] name were removed from the bureau's building. It is as if the Defense Department were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite to support legislation to accomplish1 this repudiation of a very sad chapter in American history." Silberman also served briefly as Acting Attorney General during the Watergate crisis. Silberman's resignation was accepted by President Gerald Ford, pending the confirmation of his successor.

Ford nominated Silberman as Ambassador to Yugoslavia in April 1975; he served in the role until he resigned during the presidential transition of Jimmy Carter. At the same time, Silberman also served as the Presidential Special Envoy for International Labor Organization Affairs. As Ambassador, he succeeded in freeing an American, Laszlo Toth, who had been falsely imprisoned by the regime as a CIA agent, by putting pressure on both the Yugoslav regime and the State Department. During the campaign for the 1980 presidential election, he was co-chairman of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy advisors. From 1981 to 1985, he served as a member of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament and the Defense Policy Board.

In total, Silberman has held six Senate-confirmed positions and never received a dissenting vote.

Federal judicial service

Silberman was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on September 11, 1985, to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to a new seat created by 98 Stat. 333. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 25, 1985, and received commission on October 28, 1985. He assumed senior status on November 1, 2000.

Silberman was on the short list of potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court on three separate occasions in 1987, 1990, and 1991. However, after the rejection of Robert Bork, with whom Silberman had served on the District of Columbia Circuit, he was regarded as controversial.

He was a member of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review at the time of its first ever session in 2002.

On February 6, 2004, Silberman was appointed co-chairman of the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent blue-ribbon panel created to investigate U.S. intelligence surrounding the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In the wake of the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as United States Attorney General in 2007, Silberman was mentioned as a possible successor.

In 2008, Judge Silberman initiated (joined by five other senior judges) suit against the United States, "claiming that when Congress refused to authorize statutory cost-of-living raises for federal judges, it violated the Compensation Clause [of the Constitution]". The Federal Judges Association opposed bringing the suit. The suit was ultimately successful, leading to a nationwide rise in pay for all federal judges as of January 1, 2014.

In 2015, Silberman wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing that the charge that "President Bush deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam" reminded him of "a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany".

In October 2021, Silberman won the first annual Justice Clarence Thomas First Principles Award for his judicial service. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called him "one of the all-time giants of the federal bench" and perhaps "the most influential judge never to have sat on the Supreme Court."

Academic career

Silberman was a lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻi from 1962 to 1963. He was an Adjunct Professor of Administrative Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1987 to 1994 and from 1997 to 1999, at NYU from 1995 to 1996, and at Harvard in 1998. He held the position of Distinguished Visitor from the Judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center from 2000 to 2019 and taught both administrative law and labor law. Silberman received the Charles Fahy Distinguished Adjunct Professor Award for the 2002–2003 academic year. He has also received a Lifetime Service Award (2006) and a Distinguished Service Award (2007) from the Federalist Society chapters of Georgetown and Harvard, respectively.

Personal life and death

Silberman's first wife, Rosalie "Ricky" Gaull Silberman, co-founder of the Independent Women's Forum, died on February 17, 2007. Silberman married Patricia Winn Silberman and had three children: Robert S. Silberman, Kate Fischer, and Anne Otis. His eight grandchildren include screenwriter and film producer, Katie Silberman.

Silberman was a close friend of Justice Antonin Scalia from the time when he recruited Scalia into the Ford administration. Silberman was also a friend of Justice Clarence Thomas and in 1989 encouraged a young and then-reluctant Thomas to accept a federal judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Several of his former law clerks have become federal judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Silberman died on October 2, 2022, at the age of 86.