Jerome J. Shestack recently concluded his term (1997-98) as President of the American Bar Association, which is the world's largest voluntary organization and the leader of the legal profession in the United States. He is currently Chair of the Litigation Department of Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen in Philadelphia. He has handled complex litigation for ABC, CBS, NBC, Westinghouse, GAF, Hertz, RCA, Advanta and Comcast. Mr. Shestack has been regularly cited by the National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers" in the United States.

He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1949, and was Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law School Record. After teaching at Northwestern and the University of Pennsylvania, he entered private practice in Philadelphia.

He served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights under President Jimmy Carter and also as a member of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and as a Commissioner of the United States Presidential Congressional Commission to improve the effectiveness of the United Nations under President Bush. He has chaired the International Bar Association's Standing Committee on Human Rights, was the founder and first chair of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, and was one of the founders of he Helskini Watch Committee. He also served as general counsel of Amnesty International in the U.S. He served on the Executive Committee of the American Society of International Law and is on the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists. For the ABA, he served as a member of the Board of Governors, a member of the House of Delegates, and chaired the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and the Commission on Mental and Physical Disability. He was a founder of the Legal Services Corporation. Recently, he was an active participant in the Conference in Rome, which adopted a statute for a permanent International Criminal Court.

Mr. Shestack has published more than 40 articles in textbooks and law journals and has three honorary degrees as doctor of laws. He has published monographs on Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Scott Key, William Butler Yeats, and others. He has written more than 150 op-ed articles for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Christian Science Monitor, and other newspapers. He has a past president of the American Poetry Society.