Robert L. “Bob” Weinberg, a Washington, D.C., lawyer whose career spanned criminal and civil litigation, bar leadership and decades of teaching, and whose Jewish identity informed his lifelong pursuit of justice, died on Feb. 19 at his home in Arlington. He was 94.
For 35 years, Weinberg practiced law in Washington, working alongside Edward Bennett Williams and becoming a founding partner of the firm that grew into Williams & Connolly. He divided his practice between civil and criminal litigation and was best known for his commitment to constitutional protections, indigent defense and opposition to the death penalty. He believed the legal profession carried obligations beyond private clients — that lawyers had a duty to strengthen institutions and protect individual rights.
When asked late in life which case mattered most, Weinberg pointed not to a high-profile client but to his first assignment at Williams’ firm — a pro bono appeal on behalf of a man sentenced to death. Arguing that his client had received inadequate representation at trial, particularly during sentencing, Weinberg won a reversal of the death sentence. The client’s punishment was reduced to life imprisonment. The two men remained in contact for years.
“That case really set up three of the things that were most important to him,” said David Weinberg, an astronomer and professor at Ohio State University. “That everybody should have a right to good legal representation, that pro bono representation was essential, and that he opposed the death penalty.”
Even people who were guilty, he believed, deserved due process. “If you don’t go in with the assumption that everybody deserves that fair legal treatment,” David Weinberg said, “then innocent people will get caught by injustice.”
Born on May 23, 1931, in New York City to Abraham and Beatrice Weinberg, he grew up in Greenwich Village, attending the Little Red School House and later Stuyvesant High School, where he graduated first in his class in 1949.
His father was a New York lawyer who practiced during the 1930s and devoted significant effort to immigration cases, helping relatives and others escape Europe and come to the United States. His mother was a language teacher. His sons said his father’s advocacy on behalf of immigrants helped shape Weinberg’s commitment to justice.
He went on to Yale University, the London School of Economics as a Fulbright scholar and Yale Law School. At LSE, he headed the student union and met Patricia Wendy Yates, an undergraduate student studying economics. She was the general secretary of the student union and eventually became a lawyer. Both were immersed in debate and campus politics, a shared interest that shaped their partnership of nearly 70 years.
“They were good complements,” said son Jeremy Weinberg, a lawyer at the U.S. State Department. “He was always kind and supportive of everything the family wanted to do.”
After law school, the couple settled in Arlington, where Weinberg built his practice and lived for decades.
Among his notable cases was Gaither v. United States, a decision requiring that indictments be approved by an entire grand jury rather than signed solely by a foreperson.
Weinberg also immersed himself in professional leadership. He served as president of the D.C. Bar Association and later as president of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. He remained active in bar work long after those roles ended, attending meetings and mentoring younger lawyers.
“Your father’s name carries enormous respect and affection among our members,” Alyssa N. Grzesh, executive director of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, wrote to the family. “His devotion to the law and to the broader community was remarkable and deeply felt.”
Teaching was another constant. For 50 years, Weinberg led a biweekly criminal procedure seminar at the University of Virginia School of Law. After retiring from practice in 1996, he taught grand jury procedure at George Washington University Law School.
“He very much enjoyed it,” Jeremy Weinberg said. “He liked engaging with people and with the substance of the law.”
At home, Weinberg was intellectual and curious. He followed politics closely, debated issues without needing to “win,” and took interest in what his children were studying — from literature to law to astronomy.
“He would tell you what he thought and he wanted to know what you thought,” David Weinberg said.
His Jewish identity was central to his sense of community. The family belonged to Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria and later Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church. High Holy Days and Passover were fixtures on his calendar. After his father’s death, he attended daily minyan for a year to say Kaddish.
In 1987, Weinberg and his family traveled to Eastern Europe to visit towns from which his ancestors had emigrated, including Stropkov in what is now Slovakia.
In retirement, he and his wife divided their time between Arlington and Rappahannock County, Virginia. There, he served on the zoning commission, attended a weekly “gents lunch” and coached the local high school chess team.
Chess had captivated him since his youth. He could become so absorbed in a match that, as Jeremy Weinberg recalled, “the walls could fall down around him and he might not notice.” Tennis and hiking in Shenandoah National Park offered balance to his intellectual pursuits.
An inveterate traveler, Weinberg visited Israel multiple times and, despite disliking cold weather, took a cruise to Antarctica in retirement.
In his final years, his son said, what seemed to give him the greatest peace was “the home environment and being with his family.”
Those who knew him will remember a lawyer who believed deeply in the profession’s obligations and a Jew who saw justice as both civic duty and inheritance.
Jeremy Weinberg said his father saw his legal commitments as flowing naturally from Jewish values — “taking action through the law or through political participation to try to make the world better.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
