[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 153 (Thursday, September 22, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E966-E967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HONORING LOWELL SACHNOFF

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 22, 2022

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Lowell Sachnoff, 
renowned fighter for justice, who will be receiving the 2022 Justice 
John Paul Stevens Award on September 29, 2022. The Stevens Award, 
presented by The Chicago Bar Association and Chicago Bar Foundation, is 
the highest and most prestigious award that is presented annually to 
lawyers and judges whose career best exemplifies the distinguished 
career of United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
  Lowell Sachnoff was born on Maxwell Street in Chicago, the son of 
Ukrainian immigrants who fled Eastern Europe, settled in Chicago, and 
raised their family during the Great Depression. He was inspired to 
become a lawyer by his grandparents' stories about how terrible life 
was in a lawless society. Since graduating from Harvard Law School in 
1957, Mr. Sachnoff has been on two parallel tracks: doing well and 
doing good.
  He has had a long and successful legal career in Chicago. After a few 
years at Ross, McGowan, and O'Keefe, he was appointed General Counsel 
for the Illinois Department of Mental Health, where he overhauled the 
state mental health code to expand the rights of the mentally ill and 
worked with the medical community to bring treatment of the mentally 
ill into the 20th century.
  In the early 1960s, Mr. Sachnoff established the law firm of Sachnoff 
& Weaver with a few friends. As he puts it, ``We had a vision. We

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wanted to do well, because we were young and had growing families, but 
we also wanted to do good. As the firm grew to 130 lawyers, we found 
that we could still do both; after our merger with Reed Smith, the firm 
encouraged us to stay on the same path.''
  On that path, Mr. Sachnoff was a successful securities and antitrust 
lawyer, winning groundbreaking price-fixing and takeover cases. But he 
also advocated for the wrongfully incarcerated, for women, minorities, 
the poor, and society's most vulnerable.
  In 2006, Sachnoff & Weaver was one of the first firms to represent 
Guantanamo Bay detainees. Lowell and his colleagues helped successfully 
negotiate the release of three prisoners who had been held for many 
years without being charged with any crime. He also litigated women's 
rights issues, winning a jury verdict in the 1980s against the City of 
Chicago allowing police officers to routinely strip search women for 
minor traffic violations and represented a class of women's health 
clinics, obtaining a celebrated jury verdict and nationwide injunction 
in 1998 against forcible blockades of clinic entrances.
  Now retired as a corporate litigator, Sachnoff continues to volunteer 
on public interest matters, most notably working with Senator Dick 
Durbin and his staff toward closing the Guantanamo prison, thus 
removing a moral and legal stain on our country, and to release 
patients unlawfully held in state mental hospitals.
  Lowell Sachnoff is a cherished friend, mentor, and advisor. He works 
alongside his wife, Fay Clayton, also an accomplished retired lawyer 
and women's rights advocate. My husband, Robert Creamer, and I have 
enjoyed the privilege of their friendship, wisdom, kindness, and 
insights. Congratulations to Lowell Sachnoff on this well-deserved 
recognition.

                          ____________________