Robert D. Sack

Robert D. Sack has, since 1998, been a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. During his thirty-three years in practice, he specialized in national and international press law. He was a frequent lecturer and writer on press law topics and participated in the Practising Law Institute’s Communications Law programs from their inception in 1973 until he took the bench.

He is coauthor, with P. Cameron DeVore, of Advertising and Commercial Speech: A First Amendment Guide (PLI 1999).

Judge Sack was an officer and director of the William F. Kerby and Robert S. Potter Fund, which assists in meeting the cost of the legal defense of journalists abroad, and a member of the advisory boards of the Bureau of National Affairs’ Media Law Reporter and the ABA Forum Committee’s Communications Lawyer. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society. A member of the American Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, he is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia Law School. He is also a Lecturer in Law at the Law School. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1963, Judge Sack clerked for United States District Judge Arthur S. Lane, in the District of New Jersey. He later became an associate and partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler (1964–1986) and a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (1986–1998), both in New York City. In 1974, he served as a Senior Associate Special Counsel to the United States House of Representatives Impeachment Inquiry Staff.