Condom Judge

A Hewlett patron asked me for help in copying this obit. I did so, but the edge was cut off, so I walked back to this computer and printed it. After passing over the printout, I started to read the obit. Fascinating.

Justice Gustin L. Reichbach, who went from the carefree fraternity life to leading student protests at Columbia University in 1968 and then to a career as a fiercely independent lawyer and judge, died on Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 65. The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his wife, Ellen Meyers, said.

 Across six decades of myriad public incarnations, Justice Reichbach occupied buildings at Columbia as a student, won a court case that helped legalize residential loft life in SoHo and TriBeCa, blasted a state agency from the bench for ignoring Medicaid fraud and served as a judge on a war-crimes tribunal in Kosovo.

Elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 1999, he decorated his courtroom with pictures of Paul Robeson, Clarence Darrow and striking coal miners, as well as a neon sign showing the scales of justice.

Justice Reichbach was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 9, 1946, and grew up in Flatbush, one of two sons of a machinist who organized unions. After graduating from Midwood High School, he attended the State University at Buffalo, where he was the president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. As the Vietnam War was escalating, the arrival of an R.O.T.C. military recruiting office on campus awoke a radical spirit in Mr. Reichbach, said Daniel L. Alterman, a friend who attended Buffalo with him.

 His engagement with radical politics gathered force when he was admitted to Columbia University School of Law. A classmate, Bruce Ratner, now a real estate developer, recalled meeting him as they stood in line to pay tuition in September 1967. “This guy with long blond curly hair, almost white, started talking to me with a Brooklyn accent that sounded like it was right out of ‘On the Waterfront’ and asked me if I’d found a place to stay,” Mr. Ratner said. By the time they reached the front of the line, Mr. Ratner invited him to crash in his apartment on 103rd Street. 

In court, Justice Reichbach wore robes only on sentencing days. A white scarf usually accented his three-piece suits, along with a Phi Beta Kappa key from his undergraduate days. His curly mane lost none of its exuberance as it grayed.