New York, May 14, 2007— Dennis W. Archer, prominent attorney and former mayor of the City of Detroit, will address the graduates at New York Law School’s 116th Commencement on Sunday, May 18, 2007, at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, at 10 a.m. Archer, who is the Chairman of the Detroit-based law firm Dickinson Wright, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

 

The School will graduate 410 students: 394 candidates for the Juris Doctor (J.D.) and 16 candidates for the Master of Laws (LL.M.).

 

The President’s Medal of Honor will be awarded to The Honorable Ernst H. Rosenberger ’58. The award is given to New York Law School’s most outstanding and accomplished alumni and its most generous benefactors, and acknowledges those who have made the most significant contributions to the history of the Law School by their exemplary professional lives and their generosity.

 

Dennis W. Archer is Chairman of the Dickinson Wright; the Detroit-law firm has more than 200 attorneys and has offices in Michigan and Washington, D.C. He sits on the corporate boards of Johnson Controls, Inc., Compuware Corporation, and Masco Corporation. He is also on the nonprofit boards of the CATCH Foundation and the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan. Archer served two four-year terms as mayor of the City of Detroit from 1994 to 2001 and earned national and international respect for his success in changing Detroit’s image and direction. In 2000, Mayor Archer was named Public Official of the Year by Governing magazine.

 

After graduating from Detroit College of Law in 1970, he worked as a trial lawyer and a partner in several Detroit firms, and served as Associate Professor of the Detroit College of Law and Adjunct Professor at Wayne State University Law School. He was appointed Associate Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court in 1985 and elected to an eight-year term the following year. In his final year on the bench in 1990, Archer was named the most respected judge in Michigan by Michigan Lawyers Weekly.

 

Archer has long been active in the organized bar. He was the first person of color elected president of the American Bar Association (2003-2004) as well as the State Bar of Michigan. He has also served as the president of the Wolverine Bar Association and the National Bar Association.

 

The Honorable Ernst H. Rosenberger ’58 is Of Counsel to Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, where he focuses on domestic and international litigation, as well as arbitration, alternative and international dispute resolution, and mediation. He is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for New York Law School, where he has taught part-time continuously since 1976. He was born in Hamburg, Germany and immigrated to New York City with his parents and sister to escape Nazi persecution.

 

After graduating from New York Law School in 1958, Justice Rosenberger worked at a small firm for a year before starting his own practice. He became a New York City Criminal Court Judge in 1972, and was named Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York beginning in 1973. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of the State of New York in 1977, and served as Presiding Justice of the Court’s Extraordinary Special and Trial Term for investigation of corruption in the criminal justice system. He became an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department, in 1985, and sat on more than 15,000 criminal and civil appeals from the highest trial courts of New York, before his retirement from the bench in 2004. He was named one of New York’s best judges by both New York Magazine and the Village Voice.

 

About New York Law School
Founded in 1891, New York Law School is an independent law school located in lower Manhattan near the city’s centers of law, government, and finance. New York Law School’s renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the School’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, labor and employment law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. The School is noted for its seven academic centers: Center for International Law, Center for New York City Law, Center for Professional Values and Practice, Center for Real Estate Studies, Center on Business Law and Policy, Institute for Information Law and Policy, and Justice Action Center. New York Law School has more than 13,000 graduates and enrolls some 1,500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. program and its Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Taxation program. www.nyls.edu