Arthur Lawrence Liman (November 5, 1932 – July 17, 1997) was a partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and was well known for his public service.
Early life and education
Arthur Liman was born on November 5, 1932, in Far Rockaway, Queens, and spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Long Island. Liman's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, who settled in New York City. Liman's mother was valedictorian of her high school class, Phi Beta Kappa at Hunter College, and taught Latin. His father graduated from City College of New York and taught history in public schools before joining his father's dressmaking business. Liman's older sister Gladys, a graduate of Smith College, was a poet.
Liman attended Harvard University, where he studied political science and graduated in 1954. Liman wrote in his memoir that he decided to become a lawyer after observing a day of hearings by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, known colloquially as the "McCarthy Hearings." Liman decided to attend the hearings because he had chosen to write his senior thesis on "the threat that McCarthy-style congressional investigations posed to our concepts of civil liberties and limited government." Liman recalled that "[b]y the time the spectacle ended, I was shaken to the core."
Liman pursued his law degree from Yale Law School, and graduated in 1957. He wrote that, due to Yale's teaching of legal realism, it "was the ideal place for a young man wary of orthodoxy." Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education, "Yale taught me, above all, that lawyers could make a difference in the type of society that we had."
Career
Upon graduation, Liman joined the New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he became a partner and where he worked for most of his career. Liman quickly became a trial lawyer, and "I never looked back." Liman's practice focused on commercial litigation and corporate criminal defense. Clients included Wall Street magnate Michael Milken and media conglomerate Time Warner.
Throughout, Liman devoted large portions of his time to public service. He served as an Assistant United States attorney under Robert Morgenthau from 1961-1963. There, he focused on securities fraud and also took on drug prosecutions in order to gain trial experience. Liman's experience as a prosecutor—and especially his exposure to the mandatory minimum sentences faced by the defendants he prosecuted—later informed his support for criminal justice reform.
In 1971, Liman became involved at the center of a national controversy regarding Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Attica, New York. On September 9, 1971, a series of small scuffles between prisoners and staff escalated into large-scale violence, as a group of prisoners passed through a broken gate and took control of parts of the facility (Attica Prison riot). Within several hours, 1,281 prisoners had gathered in the recreation yard, along with 42 staff members, held as hostages. A leadership group of about fifty prisoners emerged to state the prisoners' demands, which reflected long-standing disputes with the administration and focused on improving the quality of basic necessitates, increasing opportunities for rehabilitation, and curtailing the use of segregation and other punitive measures. Negotiations—conducted through intermediaries chosen by the prisoners—broke down when the Governor Rockefeller refused to grant amnesty to all prisoners involved in the rebellion. On September 13, Governor Rockefeller ordered in the State Police to take back the prison, and 39 people – 29 prisoners and 9 hostages – were killed in the span of minutes. One more hostage eventually died of gunshot wounds.
At Governor Rockefeller's request, Liman was appointed to serve as chief counsel of the New York State Special Commission on the Attica Prison uprising (the McKay Commission). Liman led the investigation, "the main purpose of which is to dispel the long-persisting doubts about what actually happened." He and his staff spent months documenting events and speaking to all parties involved. Liman took special care to develop trust with the prisoners and later described joining 500 prisoners for their supper on Christmas Day in 1971.