The Rev. Dr. Wesley S. Williams, Jr., has had a lengthy and esteemed legal career as both a practicing attorney and a law professor since completing his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1967.  He has also earned a B.A., magna cum laude, M.A., an LL.M., and a D.Min. degree.

He started as an instructor at Columbia University Law School, while commuting for a year and a half to work for the Washington Office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and as counsel to the then newly-formed District of Columbia City Council. He spent a year and a half as legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the District of Columbia.

In the fall of 1970, Dr. Williams commenced his nearly 35 years with Covington & Burling. Concurrently, he served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He also served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Dr. Williams is the recipient honoris causa of the LL.D. degree from his parents’ alma mater, Virginia Union University, “for pioneering achievements in law, business, education, religion and community service.” Also, by command of the Sovereign Prior, Her Royal Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, he was dubbed a Knight of Grace (honorary) of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem “for sustained commitment to the ideals of the Order, in service to humankind.”

After his retirement from law practice in 2004, he prepared for and was subsequently ordained to priesthood in The Episcopal Church. In this capacity, he now serves as the Bishop of the Virgin Islands’ Sub-Dean for the islands of St. Thomas and St. John, as Priest-in-Charge of the Cathedral Church of All Saints and All Saints Cathedral School, and as Vicar of Nazareth By The Sea Episcopal Church – the Cathedral, its school, and Nazareth Church all located on St. Thomas. He is the President and Co-Chairman of Lockhart Companies Incorporated. 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will receive the Henry J. Friendly Medal at the Institute’s 95th Annual Meeting. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., will present the award. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959 to 1961. From 1961 to 1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963 to 1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972 to 1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977 to 1978. In 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973 to 1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974 to 1980. She served on the Board and Executive Committee of the American Bar Foundation from 1979 to 1989, on the Board of Editors of the American Bar Association Journal from 1972 to 1978, and on the Council of The American Law Institute from 1978 to 1993. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat August 10, 1993. 

ALI President Roberta Cooper Ramo is a shareholder in the law firm of Modrall Sperling, where she concentrates her practice in the areas of mediation, arbitration, business law, real estate, probate, and estate planning.  She has been a member of the Institute since 1991 and was elected to the Council in 1997. She has served as ALI’s President since 2008 and she previously served as First Vice President from 2004 to 2008.

On August 1, 2015, Roberta received the American Bar Association's highest award, the ABA Medal.  Roberta previously served as president of the American Bar Association from 1995 to 1996, the first woman in history to lead the largest nationwide organization of attorneys.  She also serves as the first woman president of The American Law Institute, elected in 2008.  In 2011, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, adding her name to a prestigious list of members including George Washington and Albert Einstein, among other notables.

A Fellow of both the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the American Bar Foundation, Roberta also has served as a panel member for the American Arbitration Association. In 2013, Roberta was elected Board Chair of Think New Mexico, a non-partisan think tank, and she serves as a member of the Board of the Santa Fe Opera and Albuquerque Economic Development.

Roberta was appointed by the United States Senate and served as co-chair of a committee to review governance issues of the U. S. Olympic Committee in 2003. She was named an honorary member of the Bar of England and Wales, and of Gray's Inn in 2000. She served on the Board of Regents for the University of New Mexico from 1989 to 1995, and as President of the Board from 1991 to 1993. She also served on the New Mexico Board of Finance. President Ramo will be concluding her final term as ALI President at the end of this year’s Annual Meeting.

Thomas C. Goldstein is an appellate advocate, best known as one of the nation’s most experienced Supreme Court practitioners. He has served as counsel to one of the parties in roughly 10 percent of all of the Court’s merits cases for the past 15 years (more than 100 in total), personally arguing 38. Only three lawyers in the Court's modern history have argued more cases in private practice. He has been counsel on more successful petitions for certiorari over the past decade than any other lawyer in private practice. Over the past 15 years, the firm's petitions for certiorari have been granted at a higher rate than any private law firm or legal clinic.

Perhaps more than any other advocate in practice, Mr. Goldstein represents the complete spectrum of litigants before the Court; his work is not associated with any particular perspective or ideology.  For example, as arguing counsel, Mr. Goldstein has prevailed on behalf of bond purchasers, corporate civil defendants (three times), corporate civil plaintiffs (three times), a debtor, employees (twice), a habeas petitioner (three times), an immigrant, investors, an individual civil defendant, an individual criminal defendant, a local government, persons with disabilities, and shareholders.

Mr. Goldstein’s representations span virtually all of federal law. For example, as arguing counsel in the Court, he has prevailed in cases involving arbitration, bankruptcy, civil procedure (twice), disability law, employment discrimination (twice), the Fourth Amendment (twice), free speech (three times), habeas corpus (three times), immigration, labor, securities (twice), and trademarks.

Mr. Goldstein also serves as counsel in particularly significant cases in the courts of appeals. For example, he presently serves as lead counsel for most of the nation's principal retailers in a Second Circuit appeal of the second-largest class action settlement in history. Mr. Goldstein also represents a number of different corporations in patent-related matters in the Federal Circuit.

In addition to practicing law, Mr. Goldstein has taught Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School since 2004, and previously taught the same subject at Stanford Law School for nearly a decade. Mr. Goldstein is also the co-founder and publisher of SCOTUSblog – a web-site devoted to comprehensive coverage of the Court – which is the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award.

Mr. Goldstein has received a variety of recognitions for his practice before the Supreme Court and for his appellate advocacy generally. For example, in 2010, the National Law Journal named him one of the nation’s 40 most influential lawyers of the decade. The same publication included him in both of its most recent lists (2006 and 2013) of the nation’s 100 most influential attorneys. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years.” GQ named him (erroneously) one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Goldstein is involved in a variety of professional organizations. Among other things, he is a member of ALI, Secretary of the ABA Labor and Employment Section, Vice Chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA Intellectual Property Section, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Appellate Lawyers.

Mr. Goldstein previously practiced at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where for a time he served as the principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. Early in his career he was an associate at both Boies Schiller and Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. He clerked for Judge Patricia Wald of the D.C. Circuit.