Thurgood Marshall Award

Tom Sullivan helped countless people in his legal career spanning decades.

Sponsored by the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities (whose name was changed at the Annual Meeting to the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice), the annual Thurgood Marshall Award dinner was held honoring Chicago legendary attorney Thomas Sullivan of Jenner & Block. His eloquent speech had everyone hanging on to his every word. Many attendees repeated the mantra that it is incredible that one man could have accomplished all he did in one lifetime, particularly his indefatigable commitment to civil rights. He is perhaps best known for his investigation into “the famously soiled courts of Chicago,” as Scott Turow put it, that came to be known as the Operation Greylord investigation, leading to the indictment of 92 people, including 17 judges and 48 lawyers. Sullivan also represented 300 death row inmates and is said to have saved many lives in working to eradicate the death penalty in Illinois, and he has been to Guantanamo Bay eight times, putting himself at risk. He said 50 men are still incarcerated there, some being held since 2001. He represents one of them. “They have lost complete faith in the justice of America,” he said, and questioned the destruction of habeas corpus there. He said it’s “not sport for the short-winded.” And at 85 years old, he told the crowd he’s not done yet. Sullivan said, “Inside every elderly person there is a young person who asks, ‘What the hell happened?’ Time does go quickly,” he said to much laughter in the audience.

Scott Turow reminisces about his days working with Thurgood Marshall honoree Tom Sullivan.

The keynote address at this dinner, one of the highlights of the Meeting, was author/attorney Scott Turow who worked with Sullivan in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago decades ago. He regaled with stories of his working relationship with Sullivan including a call at 7 a.m. on a Sunday to go to work just weeks after becoming a father for the first time.