Photo by David Shankbone
Theodore B. Olson has been selected to receive the 2010 Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize.
Olson will accept the prize at a dinner in New York on Oct. 27. He is the 35th recipient of this national honor, bestowed by Fordham Law School’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics, which recognizes one person each year whose work, according to the prize’s charter, “exemplifies outstanding standards of professional conduct, promotes the advancement of justice, and brings credit to the profession by emphasizing in the public mind the contributions of lawyers to our society and to our democratic system of government.”
Olson served as the 42nd solicitor general of the United States from 2001 to 2004. He was nominated by, and served in the administration of, President George W. Bush. Currently, he is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office and is a member of the firm’s executive committee.
“Ted Olson is a champion for the basic American principles outlined in our Constitution,” said Michael M. Martin, interim dean of Fordham Law. “He has demonstrated this throughout his career in his representation of various clients, including our country.”
Before his service as solicitor general, Olson served as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1981 to 1984. Except for those two intervals, he has been with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.
Olson has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Last July, President Barack Obama appointed Olson to serve as a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a public-private partnership charged with providing nonpartisan, practical assessments and recommendations to improve agency procedures and operations.
Named after Louis Stein (LAW ’26), the prize recognizes the positive contributions of the legal profession to American society.
