Martin E. Karlinsky

Martin E. Karlinsky is a shareholder based in Butzel Long’s New York office. He is a trial lawyer and litigator focusing on complex business-related civil litigation. In a career extending to almost four decades, his experience has encompassed trial and appellate advocacy in business and business tort, contract and commercial, securities, corporate, employment, trusts and estates, partnership, real estate, and constitutional litigation; federal and state governmental investigations and proceedings; and arbitration and mediation before principal U.S. and foreign forums. Mr. Karlinsky is a seasoned trial lawyer with over 150 jury trials, bench trials, arbitrations, and argued appeals, and regularly teaches trial advocacy to the profession and law students. With a focus on the financial services sector, his experience also extends to a wider range of industries and activities including real estate, technology, retail, media, public relations, and not-for-profit organizations.

Mr. Karlinsky is a graduate of the University of San Francisco School of Law (J.D., 1976), where he was Managing Editor of the USF Moot Court Board. During law school he served as a full-time extern law clerk to the Hon. William H. Orrick, Jr., Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Mr. Karlinsky earlier graduated from New York University’s Washington Square College of Arts & Sciences (B.A., 1972, cum laude, with honors in English and American Literature). In June 2009, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conferred an Honorary Fellowship on Mr. Karlinsky in recognition of his professional and communal contributi0ns.

Mr. Karlinsky has been Peer Review Rated as AV®Preeminent™, the top performance rating under Martindale-Hubbell’s peer review lawyer rating system. Additionally, Mr. Karlinsky has been selected a New York Super Lawyer in Business Litigation from 2005 to the present. (New York Super Lawyers rates and ranks the top 5% of New York lawyers.)

Mr. Karlinsky has taught trial advocacy to lawyers and law students since 1992, as head of advocacy training in his own firm and as an instructor for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA) at programs at Hofstra and Temple Law Schools and at the National Session of NITA in Colorado. Since 2000, he has returned frequently to USF to teach in its Intensive Advocacy Program, and in 2009, he implemented a trial skills training program at Butzel Long.
Mr. Karlinsky spent his formative years as an associate at the New York law firm of Shea & Gould, then one of the leading business litigation firms in the country. In 1982, Mr. Karlinsky founded Camhy Karlinsky & Stein LLP, a firm which ultimately grew to 60 lawyers, and served as its managing partner for most of its existence. In 2000, Mr. Karlinsky joined Rosenman & Colin LLP as a partner. He remained at that firm and its successor, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, until joining Butzel Long in February 2009.

Mr. Karlinsky holds national leadership positions with the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (AFHU), a national non-profit organization that supports The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the leading universities of the world. Since 2009, Mr. Karlinsky has served as the National President of AFHU; since 2006, he has been a member of the National Board of Directors of AFHU (as well as an Associate Governor, Governor, and Executive Committee member of the Board of Governors of The Hebrew University itself), and was President of the Greater New York Region of AFHU from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Karlinsky formerly held national and regional leadership positions with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), having served as a member of the National Commission and National Executive Committee of ADL, as Chair of ADL’s Litigation Oversight Committee, Chair of its National Legal Affairs Committee, Chair of the ADL Legacy Campaign, Chair and Associate Chair of ADL’s New York Regional Board, and Vice Chair of ADL’s National Civil Rights Committee. Mr. Karlinsky also served for many years as a trustee of the ADL Foundation.

Mr. Karlinsky has a lengthy record of representation of ADL and other civil and human rights and advocacy organizations as amici in cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. These include Miller v. Johnson, a key 1995 congressional redistricting case arising under the Equal Protection Clause; Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, an important 2000 federalism case; Zelman v. Simmons-Harris in 2001, which involved the constitutionality of the Cleveland, Ohio school voucher program; Virginia v. Black, a 2002 case that sustained the underlying constitutionality of Virginia’s anti-cross burning statute; the 2003 cases of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, cases that appraised the constitutionality of the University of Michigan affirmative action programs; the “Pledge of Allegiance case” (Elk Grove School Dist. v. Newdow), a 2004 case involving claims that mandatory recitation of the Pledge (with the words “under God”) in California elementary school classrooms violated the Establishment Clause; the 2006 “race-conscious school assignment plans” cases (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, et al.; Crystal Meredith, Custodial Parent and Next Friend of Joshua Ryan McDonald v. Jefferson County Bd. Of Educ., et al.); Ricci v. DeStefano, a 2008 affirmative action case involving firefighters of the City of New Haven, Connecticut; and McDonald v. City of Chicago, the 2009 case involving the Second Amendment and municipal gun control.