Washington, July 01, 2004
Joe Khosla
A leading constitutional lawyer, NRI, Preeta D. Bansal, has been elected
as chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
On Thursday, Bansal became the first Indian American to chair the independent
and bipartisan federal agency that advises the US administration and
Congress. She has served as the commissioner on the panel
Preeta Bansal is the former Solicitor General of the State of New York,
a position she held during the first three years of Attorney Generals
Eliot Spitzers administration. As Solicitor General, she helped
supervise a staff of six hundred lawyers in the New York Department
of Law, and directly oversaw forty-five lawyers in the Solicitor General=s
Office. The Solicitor Generals office handles appeals for the
State of New York and its agencies in state and federal courts, writes
Attorney General opinions to state and municipal agencies on issues
of state law, and provides advice and counsel to State agencies.
During her tenure as Solicitor General, Ms. Bansal focused on strengthening
the credibility of the Attorney Generals office, and the Solicitor
Generals office in particular, with the courts and public. She
played a primary role in reviewing and refining some substantive positions
taken by the State in litigation and in Attorney General opinions, and
in implementing steps to enhance the credibility and quality of written
and oral advocacy performed by the office. She engaged in extensive
and active recruitment of attorneys for the Attorney Generals
office from various sectors of the New York legal community, as well
as regular dialogue and relationship-building with the New York state
and federal court systems and judges. She initiated major steps to reorganize
and reinvigorate management, training and procedures within the Solicitor
Generals office and the Attorney Generals office as a whole
with the aim of making state government accountable, transparent, efficient
and more inclusive. She played a principal role in helping the Attorney
General to formulate and articulate a vision for a proactive enforcement
role for state attorneys general nationwide in the wake of the Supreme
Courts new federalism jurisprudence. She also argued
cases in the United States Supreme Court, the en banc Second Circuit,
and the New York State Court of Appeals on behalf of New York State.
She has been profiled in many national news and legal publications,
including The New York Times and the New York Law Journal.
Ms. Bansal is a magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe
College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where
she was Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review. She served as
a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme
Court (1990-1991) and to Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1989-1990). Prior to her appointment
as New York Solicitor General, Ms. Bansal practiced First Amendment/media
and appellate law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York City
(1996-1999), and previously with Arnold & Porter in Washington,
D.C. (1991-1993). She served in the Clinton Administration (1993-1996)
as Counselor in the U.S. Justice Department and as Special Counsel in
the Office of the White House Counsel, where she focused on the Presidents
judicial nominations, issues relating to youth violence and violence
against women, coordination of the United States agenda for the
United Nations Conference on Women (Beijing), and defense of the First
Ladys Health Care Task Force. She also served as Counselor to
Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein (now Chancellor of the New York
City school system) in the U.S. Department of Justice (Antitrust Division).
She has organised and sponsored numerous fact-finding missions to Sudan,
China, Egypt, and elsewhere and has testified regularly before Congress
about the governments of these countries. She is the author of In the
Lion's Den, a book on anti-Christian persecution around the world, and
writes frequently on the status of religious freedom in the world.
Ms. Bansal has been a regular speaker and lecturer on constitutional
law issues in the United States and abroad, and has authored and co-authored
pieces published in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Villanova
Law Review, among other publications. She has received awards and recognition
from several local and national legal associations and immigrant community
groups, and has been active in numerous community and social service
activities. She is a regular volunteer at community soup kitchens, has
served as a life skills mentor to inner New York City children, and
serves on the national boards of several nonprofit organizations. She
received her elementary and secondary education in Lincoln, Nebraska.
She was born in India and immigrated with her family to the American
Midwest at the age of three. She currently is on sabbatical and teaching
constitutional law as a Visiting Professor in her hometown of Lincoln,
Nebraska.