Kentucky public interest lawyer John Rosenberg has been awarded the American Bar Association’s highest honor, the ABA Medal, for “exceptionally distinguished service to the cause of American jurisprudence.” A Holocaust survivor, Rosenberg founded the nonprofit Appalachian Research and Defens e Fund or AppalReD in 1970 to provide free legal assistance to low income Kentuckians in civil matters such as family law, domestic violence, workplace rights, consumer protection and housing. AppalReD, based in Prestonsburg, serves 37 counties in southeastern and south-central Kentucky. “From escaping the Nazis and the Holocaust to serving in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan to founding AppalReD Legal Aid in Kentucky, John Rosenberg has dedicated his life to fairness and equity. His commitment to access to justice and the rule of law has helped lay the foundation to make justice a reality for all,” said ABA President Michelle A. Behnke. Rosenberg will accept the award at the ABA Annual Conference in Chicago in August. In a news release, he is quoted as saying, “I’m really honored to receive this award,” Rosenberg said. “I would like to think that I’m representing the other public interest lawyers in this country, especially those who provide civil services to the poor and the public defenders, and the members of the private bar who volunteer to help with these important cases.” The ABA release says Rosenberg was was born in Magdeburg, German. In 1938 when he was 7, he and his parents were pulled from their home by Nazis and kept in an internment camp for a year before securing passage to the United States in 1940.  “The family lived in South Carolina and North Carolina where Rosenberg became an Eagle Scout and went on to attend Duke University where he joined the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program and upon graduation served for three years as a navigator and instructor navigator in the U.S. Air Force. He was the first in his family to go to college. He went on to study law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated amid the Civil Rights Movement. “He immediately went to work as a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and litigated discrimination cases for about eight years largely in the South where he worked on high-profile civil rights cases, including the case where three voter registration workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi. He also successfully tried the first voting rights case in the South after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. “Rosenberg met his wife, Jean, in the Civil Rights Division, where they worked together. “In 1970, a trip to Eastern Kentucky opened an opportunity for Rosenberg to work to address symptomatic issues of poverty and assist low-income residents with their legal needs. Rosenberg led AppalReD Legal Aid as director and emeritus director for more than 28 years.” Past recipients of the ABA Medal include Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative; Dennis Archer, former ABA president; Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. senator, First Lady and U.S. secretary of state; and Bill Gates Sr., lawyer and philanthropist, according to the ABA news release. Lawyers who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court, including Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and Charles Evans Hughes, and Associate Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Lewis F. Powell Jr., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sandra Day O’Connor, Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tom Clark and Felix Frankfurter, also are past ABA Medal recipients. The post KY lawyer John Rosenberg receives national honor for his commitment to justice appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less