Bernard W. Nussbaum

Bernard W. Nussbaum (born March 23, 1937) is an American attorney, best known for having served as White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton.

Background and career

Nussbaum, the first child of immigrant parents, was born in New York City and grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan. He was educated in the New York City public schools and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1954. He went to Columbia College in New York as a scholarship student where he became Editor-in-Chief of the college daily newspaper and a member of phi beta kappa. He graduated from Columbia in 1958 and enrolled at Harvard Law School. After his first year he was selected to join the Harvard Law Review and in his senior year became Note Editor of the Review. Upon completing law school in 1961, Nussbaum was awarded a Harvard University Sheldon Traveling Fellowship enabling him to travel around the world for a year visiting over 30 countries. On his return he served for six months on active active duty in the United States Army and then was a member of the Reserves. In 1962 he was sworn in as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, in the office led by Robert Morgenthau. He was a federal prosecutor for over 3 years and tried a number of major criminal cases.

In 1966, Nussbaum joined the New York law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, one year after the firm was founded, He remains a senior partner in the Wachtell, Lipton firm and specializes in corporate and securities litigation. He has won a number of major cases, including, in 2004, a jury verdict in excess of a billion dollars on behalf of the developer of the World Trade Center against a number of insurance companies. Recently, because judicial salaries in New York had been frozen for more than a decade (the legislature refused to raise judicial salaries unless its salaries were also raised), Nussbaum represented the Chief Judge of the State of New York and the Judiciary of the State, pro bono, in successful constitutional litigation (ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals) resulting in a decision declaring that holding judicial salaries hostage to legislative salaries was unconstitutional. As a consequence of that decision, the Legislature and the Governor agreed to change the system for determining the compensation of judges. Decisions regarding judicial salaries will now be made every four years by an independent commission rather than the executive and legislative branches. In August 2011 the first commission appointed raised the salaries of New York state judges (presently $136,700 for trial judges) to the level of federal district judges ($174,000), the increase to be phased in over a two and a half year period commencing April 2012.

Watergate

In December 1973 Nussbaum left his law firm to serve as a senior member on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate scandal. He was involved in overseeing the fact gathering process and in presenting the results of that inquiry to the House Judiciary Committee. In July 1974 the Committee, by a bi-partisan vote, voted to recommend to the House of Representatives that the President be impeached. Shortly thereafter, in August 1974, President Nixon resigned. During that year Nussbaum met and worked with Hillary Rodham who was also a member of the Committee staff. After the President's resignation Nussbaum rejoined his law firm.

Counsel to President Clinton

In 1993, Nussbaum again left his law firm when he was appointed Counsel to the President of the United States. During his tenure as President Clinton's White House Counsel he was involved in a number of major personnel and policy issues facing the administration. These included the appointment of Janet Reno as Attorney General, the recruitment of a new FBI director, and the selection of approximately 100 federal judges, most notably Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was also involved in handling the early stages of the Whitewater matter and the investigation of the suicide of his deputy, Vincent Foster. Contrary to the advice of others on the White House staff and in the administration, Nussbaum strongly urged the President not to seek the appointment of an Independent Counsel with respect to these matters. He stated there was no basis for such an appointment as there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the President either before or after he entered office,. He warned the President that such an appointment would haunt his presidency as the institution of the Independent Counsel, which is responsible to no one, tends to become (especially when it is investigating a President) an uncontrolled, never ending effort to find wrongdoing even where none exists and would likely last as long as he was President and beyond. In a memoir published after he left office, President Clinton wrote that the single biggest error he made as President was asking for the appointment of an Independent Counsel.

Resignation and subsequent events

Nussbaum resigned on March 5, 1994, as a result of the Whitewater controversy and the position he took regarding the appointment of an Independent Counsel. He returned to his law firm and resumed the private practice of law. Following his resignation the Whitewater Independent Counsel looked into the conduct of the White House Counsel's Office in connection with the so-called Filegate matter (involving the erroneous sending of FBI background files to the White House), but no improper conduct was found. In 1993 Nussbaum was awarded an honorary LL.D from The George Washington University National Law Center. He also serves on a number of philanthropic boards of trustees, including the board of The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. In 2008 Nussbaum married Nancy Kuhn. His first wife, Toby, to whom he was married for 42 years, died of cancer in 2006. He has three children and four grandchildren.

External links

• Bio page at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
• Profile in Harvard Law Bulletin

Legal offices
Preceded by C. Boyden Gray	White House Counsel 1993-1994	Succeeded by Lloyd Cutler