Crucial
In 1968, Lewis Steel argued that one justice’s vote did not matter much. Five decades of close decisions by the court have persuaded him to rethink that argument.
Author of the just released memoir The Butler’s Child, written with Beau Friedlander, Lewis M. Steel has worked as a lawyer for the NAACP and is now senior counsel to Outten & Golden LLP. He works on a range of class action cases involving sexual and racial discrimination and overtime claims. His precedent-setting decisions include Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 U.S. 176, which established that American subsidiaries of foreign corporations must obey American civil rights laws. He lives in New York.