[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 23524-23525]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO WILLIAMS S. GREENBERG

 Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I would like to recognize 
Brigadier General (Retired) William S. Greenberg, one of my 
constituents, who was honored on October 14, 2010, with the Rutgers Law 
School Alumni Association Public Service Award. Bill Greenberg has a 
long association with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He 
is a member of the Newark law class of 1967. In 1966, as president of 
the Student Bar Association, he gave a memorable speech accepting the 
new law school building on behalf of the student body. He was joined in 
that ceremony by then-Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren.
  Following his graduation from Rutgers, he enlisted in the 5th 
Squadron of the 117th Cavalry of the 50th Armored Division, the Jersey 
Blues, and was selected as the outstanding enlisted cavalry trooper of 
the training cycle while at Fort Knox. Returning to New Jersey, he 
served as law secretary to Judge Robert A. Matthews, a Rutgers Law 
School alumnus, then sitting as a judge of the New Jersey Superior 
Court, Chancery Division, in Hudson County, and later as presiding 
judge of the Superior Court, Appellate Division.
  Bill Greenberg began a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, bar 
leader, and soldier, author, public servant, and benefactor with 
McCarter & English, New Jersey's oldest and largest law firm and one of 
the region's most respected, where Bill is a senior partner today.
  Throughout his career, his connection to Rutgers has remained strong, 
as exemplified by his support of the Justice Morris Pashman Scholarship 
Fund. He was chosen one of four commissioners of the New Jersey State 
Commission of Investigation by his Rutgers Law classmate, the late Alan 
J. Karcher, then-speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly. During a 
public-service leave from McCarter & English, he served as assistant 
counsel to Gov. Richard J. Hughes, himself a graduate of Rutgers Law 
School. He represented the Governor in an important case involving 
senatorial courtesy before the New Jersey Supreme Court. This was the 
first of many important cases Bill Greenberg has argued. He has more 
than 100 published opinions to his credit. During his more than 40 
years of private practice, he has founded his own law firm, served in 
many public positions, has been a noted litigator and bar association 
leader, as well as an author and benefactor of many educational and 
charitable institutions.
  He served as prosecutor of Princeton. He was a commissioner of the 
New Jersey State Scholarship Commission. He was appointed by the 
Supreme Court of New Jersey to the Mercer County Ethics Committee and 
the Civil Practice Committee. He also served as a member of the New 
Jersey Supreme Court Committee on the admission of foreign attorneys, a 
groundbreaking effort by the New Jersey Supreme Court to permit Cuban 
lawyers who had emigrated to New Jersey to be permitted to take the bar 
examinations.
  He was a trustee of both the New Jersey State Bar Association and the 
New Jersey State Bar Foundation. He served as chair of the Military Law 
Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association. In addition to holding 
many offices in the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, New 
Jersey--the New Jersey Association for Justice--he served as its 
president. He is an author and frequent lecturer on many litigation 
matters, and for over 20 years he has been the author and editor of the 
Civil Trial Handbook, Volume 47 of the New Jersey Practice Series, now 
in its fifth edition.
  Civic minded and charitable, Bill Greenberg serves as a vice 
president of the Thanks To Scandinavia Educational and Charitable Trust 
of New York, which gives educational scholarships to recognize the 
efforts made by the Scandinavian countries to save Jews during World 
War II. He is chairman of the Mary Sachs Charitable Trust in 
Harrisburg, PA, established by his great aunt, which has over the past 
50 years distributed millions of dollars in scholarships and other aid 
to educational and charitable organizations in central Pennsylvania. He 
and his wife, the former Betty Kaufmann Wolf of Pittsburgh, have 
established the Dr. Peter Scardino Trust at the Memorial Sloan 
Kettering Cancer Center to aid needy cancer patients. In addition, he 
and his wife have established endowed scholarships at Johns Hopkins and 
Brown Universities for needy students and have contributed 
substantially to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
  He recently received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Johns 
Hopkins and serves on its undergraduate advisory board. In December

[[Page 23525]]

2009, he was selected Lawyer of the Year by the New Jersey Law Journal, 
the leading law publication of record in our State. This year, he 
received the Major General Howard Louderback Award for lifetime service 
from the New Jersey Committee of the Department of Defense Committee 
for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.
  I was pleased to recommend Bill Greenberg to the White House to be 
Chairman of the Reserve Forces Policy Board. He was selected by 
Secretary Gates for that important position in August 2009 and 
reappointed in August 2010. This board, created by Congress in 1952, is 
the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of Defense for Reserve 
component matters. I was pleased to make this recommendation because of 
General Greenberg's background of 27 years of military service in the 
Reserve components as an enlisted cavalry trooper, a member of the 
Judge Advocate General's Corps, and as a flag officer. More 
importantly, he established the Military Legal Assistance Program of 
the New Jersey State Bar Association for wounded or injured reservists 
called to duty after September 11, 2001. He personally and with members 
of his law firm, McCarter & English, has represented over 50 individual 
soldiers at Walter Reed in obtaining adequate military and veterans 
compensation. He is widely recognized as an expert in the field as well 
as a selfless advocate for individual soldiers and veterans in their 
legal struggles.
  To those of us who are privileged to know Bill Greenberg personally, 
he brings passion, energy, hard work, patriotism, and dedication to all 
that he undertakes. These qualities have been recognized by his 
colleagues in the legal profession and in the Pentagon, where he has 
served with distinction and has consistently put foremost the interests 
of the individual reservist and the veteran. The American soldier has 
no greater friend than Bill Greenberg.

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