Samuel Joshua Silverman (25 September 1908 – 6 March 2001) was a three time

New York State Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...

Justice and career

litigator - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

who was involved in several high-profile cases

Background and early career

Born in Odessa,

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

(part of Russia at the time), his parents immigrated to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

while he was still a toddler. Silverman graduated from with distinction from Columbia College in 1928, and earned his law degree from

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

in 1930. Soon he became an assistant corporation counsel for

's government. Shortly thereafter he became a partner at a firm that would become

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (known as Paul, Weiss) is an American multinational law firm headquartered on Sixth Avenue in New York City. By profits per equity partner, it is the fifth most profitable law firm in the world. ...

. During his tenure Silverman represented Dr.

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...

, the nuclear physicist, at a 1954 loyalty hearing conducted by a panel of the Atomic Energy Commission. Later, Silverman represented

Otto Frank Otto Heinrich Frank (12 May 1889 – 19 August 1980) was a German businessman who later became a resident of the Netherlands and Switzerland. He was the father of Anne and Margot Frank and husband of Edith Frank, and was the sole member o ...

, the father of

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

, in a lawsuit over a proposed stage adaptation of the famous ''

Diary of Anne Frank ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherl ...

''.

Later career

Democrat Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to: Politics *A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people. *A member of a Democratic Party: **Democratic Party (United States) (D) **Democratic ...

, Silverman was elected to state supreme court in 1962. He served there for four years before in 1966 becoming involved in a highly-public campaign with then- Senator

Robert F. Kennedy Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...

, egged on by

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

leader Alex Rose, to end patronage corruption in New York's

Surrogate Court A probate court (sometimes called a surrogate court) is a court that has competence in a jurisdiction to deal with matters of probate and the administration of estates. In some jurisdictions, such courts may be referred to as Orphans' Courts o ...

. Specifically, members of the Democratic and

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

parties were cross endorsing each other's candidates for the court in order to promote individuals who would skim commission from inheritance cases and introduce some of these funds back into the political machine. ("Don't die in the city of New York, don't die--if you want to leave anything to your wife and children," Kennedy exhorted.) Silverman won in a landslide, but his efforts at reform were hindered. In a 1967 constitutional convention Silverman's core proposal to abolish the surrogate court and reassign its jurisdiction to a rotation group of state supreme court justices was defeated. Silverman retired in 1971 from the surrogate court and returned to the state supreme court, frustrated by boredom, and reform failures, particularly frustrated with his hard-line senior colleague S. Samuel DiFalco (who was indicted for corruption charges in 1978, but died before the trial). Silverman was promoted to the Appellate Division in 1976. He remained at the state supreme court until he retired in 1984, when he returned as senior counsel for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Silverman died at aged 92 at the Weill Cornell Medical Center of

New York-Presbyterian Hospital The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New ...

Sources

New York Times Obituaries, March 11, 2001
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20121102175036/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,835926,00.html?promoid=googlep The Making of the Surrogate, July 8, 1966*''Robert Kennedy and His Times'' by

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Silverman, Samuel Joshua 1908 births 2001 deaths New York (state) lawyers Columbia Law School alumni Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people Columbia College (New York) alumni 20th-century American lawyers Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department justices