Bennett Boskey
Bennett Boskey (1916–2016) was an American lawyer who clerked for Judge Learned Hand and for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Stanley Reed and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. He helped to craft the standing doctrine in Ex parte Quirin, which enabled the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case against German military saboteurs and had legal implications during the War on Terror in the first two decades of the 21st Century. Boskey became an ALI member in 1951 and was elected to Council in 1972. His dedicated service as the Institute’s Treasurer for 35 years (1975–2010) far exceeds the tenure of any other ALI officer.
During World War II, Boskey served in the U.S. Army and was discharged as a first lieutenant. He was special assistant to the Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice in 1943, an adviser on enemy property in the U.S. Department of State from 1946 to 1947, and an attorney for the Atomic Energy Commission from 1947 to 1949; he served as deputy general counsel for the AEC from 1949 to 1951. Boskey was a partner in the law firm of Volpe, Boskey and Lyons and its predecessors until its dissolution in 1996.
His significant contributions to ALI’s projects included service as an Adviser on the Restatement Second of Judgments, Restatement Third of Foreign Relations Law, the Complex Litigation Project, the Federal Judicial Code, and Restatement of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations. According to membership records, through 2011, Boskey had not missed an Annual Meeting in more than 50 years. In 2007, he received the Institute’s Distinguished Service Award for his long and outstanding service to the Institute. Upon his death in 2016, Boskey left nearly $7 million to the Institute to continue its work.