Laurence H. Silberman ’57

Laurence H. Silberman ’57 died on October 2, 2022. Larry came to Dartmouth from Croydon Hall Academy (New Jersey). He majored in history and was in Sigma Chi, the Young Republicans, and the Pre-law Club. He served six months active duty in the U.S. Army, then attended Harvard Law School, earning his degree in 1961. Larry started his career in Honolulu, Hawaii,practicing corporate labor law and rising to partner in Moore, Silberman & Schulze. In 1968 he went to Washington, D.C., to argue before the National Labor Relations Board and become general counsel and then undersecretary of the U.S. Labor Department. In 1972 he reentered private practice as a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, returned to government as deputy attorney general in the Watergate era, and was appointed ambassador to Yugoslavia. He was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, publishing in national media. He became a managing partner in Morrison & Foerster, then executive vice president of Crocker Bank in San Francisco. Larry was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, presiding for 36 years. He believed in conservative judicial restraint and lamented that in recent years every Democratic and some GOP judges abandoned that view in favor of activist judging. He was mentor to a vast network of clerks who populate the federal judiciary and government. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2008. Larry is survived by wife Patricia, son Robert ’80, and daughters Katherine ’81 and Anne.