Greene, Harold Herman

▪ 2001

Heinz Gruenhaus 

      German-born American federal judge (b. February 1923, Frankfurt, Ger.—d. Jan. 29, 2000, Washington, D.C.), presided over the 1983–84 antitrust suit that split telephone giant AT&T into seven regional companies. As a young lawyer, he worked (1957–65) under Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the Department of Justice, helping draft the legislation that eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 1978 by Pres. Jimmy Carter. His ruling in the AT&T case transformed the field of telecommunications by bringing competition to the industry. In 1990 he also presided over former national security adviser John Poindexter's Iran-contra trial, ordering former president Ronald Reagan to testify as a witness—the first time a U.S. president had been compelled to testify in a case that pertained to his own administration.

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