Nathan Lewin

While he was an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice under Solicitors General Archibald Cox and Thurgood Marshall, he argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Lewin's Supreme Court cases included the representation of banks and other commercial interests as well as criminal cases and issues of constitutional law.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in the case of Zivotofsky v. Clinton,[3] holding that the political question doctrine does not deprive a federal court of jurisdiction to enforce a federal statute that explicitly directs the Secretary of State how to record the birthplace of an American citizen on a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and on a passport.[4]

On April 21, 2014, the Supreme Court granted Lewin's certiorari petition in the follow-up case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry, which concerns the question whether a federal statute that directs the Secretary of State, on request, to record the birthplace of an American citizen born in Jerusalem as born in "Israel" on a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and on a United States passport is unconstitutional on the ground that the statute "impermissibly infringes on the President's exercise of the recognition power reposing exclusively in him".[5]

Lewin has been a champion in advocating for First Amendment rights and civil liberties. He has successfully argued many cases involving the right to display the Chanukah menorah in a public forum, including two such cases before en banc courts of the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits. Among these cases was County of Allegheny v. ACLU in which the Supreme Court held that the Lubavitch had the right to maintain a menorah on public property in Pittsburgh. He represented an Air Force psychologist in the Supreme Court case testing his constitutional right to wear a yarmulke while on duty. In 1976, Lewin represented the Hasidic community of Williamsburg in the Supreme Court, in its constitutional challenge to a racially conscious legislative reapportionment, urging a rule of constitutional law that the Supreme Court accepted 20 years later.

Lewin initiated a lawsuit against Yale University on behalf of Orthodox freshmen and sophomores who could not reside in co-educational dormitories on religious grounds. He brought lawsuits on behalf of Sabbath-observers who were discriminated against in private employment, on behalf of military chaplains who were denied the right to wear religiously motivated beards, and on behalf of Jewish prisoners who were denied kosher food.[6] He was the attorney for the Satmar Kiryas Joel school for handicapped children in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, a case in defense of a law creating a special public school district for handicapped children in that community, which was heard by the Supreme Court in 1994.

Lewin drafted a number of legislative provisions that preserve the constitutional right to freedom of religion including: the provision of the federal Civil Rights Act enacted in 1972 that protects religious observances of private employees, the provision of federal law that enables federal employees to observe religious holidays without financial penalty, the provision of New York's Domestic Relations Law that conditions the issuance of a civil divorce on removal of barriers to remarriage such as the delivery or acceptance of a get (Jewish religious divorce), and the provision of federal law that entitles servicemen to wear yarmulkes.

In 1974–1975, Lewin was Visiting Professor at the Harvard Law School, and taught Advanced Constitutional Law (First Amendment Litigation), appellate advocacy, and "Defense of White-Collar Crime". Lewin was Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown Law School and at the University of Chicago Law School, and taught Jewish Civil Law at George Washington University Law School in 1998 and 2001. Lewin also led a seminar in Supreme Court litigation at Columbia Law School.

Between 1982 and 1984, he served as President of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, and for more than 30 years, he served as the national vice president of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA). Lewin was president of the American Section of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists from 1992 to 1997. He is currently Honorary President of its successor, the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

Lewin's individual clients have included the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, whom he represented while he was serving as Attorney General, President Richard Nixon, Jodie Foster, John Lennon, nursing home owner Bernard Bergman, Congressman George Hansen, Teamsters president Roy Williams, and Israeli war hero Aviem Sella.

Lewin represented Sholom Rubashkin,[7] after the latter was sentenced to 27 years in jail.[8]

Lewin conceded he submitted a picture of Baruch Herzfeld dancing with a non-Jewish woman to an Orthodox rabbinical court as part of his case against him, but insists it was "a minor detail of the case".[9]

In 2014 and 2015, Lewin represented Binyamin Stimler, a member of the Epstein-Wolmark gang whose purpose was the kidnap and torture of Jewish men in order to force them into granting religious divorces to their wives.[10] Stimler was sentenced to 39 months in prison for his role in the plot.[11]

Currently, Lewin practices law together with his daughter Alyza D. Lewin, at Lewin & Lewin, LLP. Lewin & Lewin, LLP specializes in white-collar criminal defense and in federal appellate litigation, and is located in Washington, D. C.