Daniel A. Rezneck, ’83, former senior assistant attorney
general for the District of Columbia and fourth president
of the D.C. Bar, passed away on February 23, 2021 at age
eighty-five. Dan taught at Georgetown University Law
Center for fifty-six years. From 1995 to 2001, he served
as general counsel to the District of Columbia Financial
Control Board, which took the city out of bankruptcy.
After Harvard Law School in 1959, Dan clerked for U.S.
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan from 1960 to
1961. He then became an assistant U.S. attorney for the
District of Columbia, describing it in a 2007 interview as
his “best job.” After his three-year stint as an AUSA, Dan
began private practice which included many high-profile
cases, including a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision
that juveniles accused of crimes must be afforded many
of the same due process rights as adults; in 1972, Dan
argued Shadwick v. City of Tampa, which dealt with the
question whether a municipal court clerk could issue
a valid arrest warrant; in 1983 he argued on behalf of
the petitioners in District of Columbia Court of Appeals v.
Feldman, which became the basis for the Rooker-Feldman
Doctrine prohibiting lower federal courts from reviewing
state court civil judgments. Dan was survived by his wife,
Beverly, two children, and four grandchildren.
Dean Allen Robb, Sr., ’80, was ninety-four when he
passed away on December 2, 2018. Dean interrupted his
undergraduate education at the University of Illinois to
serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II and earned
his law degree from Wayne State in 1949. Dean was
a founding member of the first interracial law firm in
America and was a leading legal figure in the American
Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s. He recruited
and organized lawyers throughout the country to provide
legal support to civil rights demonstrators. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. acted as the keynote speaker at the conference
Dean organized in Atlanta in 1963. Dean travelled
to Danville, Virginia during the Civil Rights Movement
to support the legal defense of over 700 non-violent
voting rights demonstrators. He was the attorney for the
family of Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit homemaker who was
tragically murdered in
1965 by the Ku Klux Klan
in Alabama following the
famous march from Selma
to Montgomery. Throughout
his career, Dean was
an advocate for the bullied,
the injured, the voiceless,
the marginalized, and the
dispossessed. He mentored
and inspired young people to “be powerful,” “get out of
your comfort zone” and “say yes to people in need.” Dean
is survived by his wife Cindy Robb, five children, five
grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Stanley D. Robinson, ’75, died at home on December
6, 2020 at the age of ninety-four survived by his three
children and granddaughter. Janet Robinson, his wife of
sixty-four years, predeceased him. While serving as an
Ensign in the Navy he attended Dartmouth College and
Harvard Business School. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of
Columbia College and Columbia Law School, he was
an editor of the Law Review. He commenced his legal
career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern
District of New York. In private practice, he represented
Xerox Corp in what was, at the time, the longest civil
trial in the history of the federal courts. His passions
included worldwide travel, wine collecting, baking
bread, old movies, opera and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Robert K. Ruskin, ’78, who as New York City’s investigation
commissioner in the early 1970s probed corruption
among building
inspectors, construction
unions, police officers,
parking ticket officials and
peep-show operators, died
on September 23, 2020.
He was ninety-three. In
1970, after The New York
Times reported allegations
of widespread corruption
in the New York City Police
Department, Mayor
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