Preeta D. Bansal
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Preeta D. Bansal is a leading United States lawyer whose career has spanned government service and private practice. A partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, she is a member and past chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and former Solicitor General of the State of New York during Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's first Term.
Bansal was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. She received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1986 and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989. She served as Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she clerked for Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1989 to 1990 and for United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens from 1990 to 1991.
Following private practice in Washington, D.C., Bansal worked in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 1996 as a Counselor in the U.S. Department of Justice and as a White House Special Counsel. At the Justice Department, she assisted Joel Klein, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, on U.S. v. Microsoft and other matters. In the White House Counsel's office, her duties incluided vetting and guiding President Clinton's Supreme Court and judicial nominees through the Senate confirmation process.
In 1999, newly elected New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer recruited her to serve in his office as Solicitor General of the State of New York, the statutory ranking officer after the Attorney General. In that capacity, she was in charge of the office's appellate activities, supervising 45 lawyers in the Solicitor General's Office who filed 40 to 50 appellate briefs each week, and she also helped manage the significant legal positions and amicus strategy of the 600 lawyers in the Attorney General’s Office. Bansal won the “Best United States Supreme Court Brief” award from the National Association of Attorneys General during every year that she served as New York Solicitor General, and is widely credited with initiating significant managerial reforms to enhance the legal excellence, efficiency and transparency of the Solicitor General's Office and with providing the intellectual underpinning of "federalism" that later animated Attorney General Spitzer's active state enforcement agenda.
Bansal returned to Nebraska and taught Constitutional Law, Federalism, and a seminar on "Courts, Politics and Legal/Social Change: Evaluating the Limits and Successes of Rights-Based Approaches" as a Visiting Professor at the University of Nebraska Law School from 2002-2003. She was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2003.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle chose Bansal for the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in 2003, at which time she also rejoined private law practice in New York at Skadden, Arps. The USCIRF investigates freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad and recommends countries for designation as Country of Particular Concern by the United States Secretary of State. Her fellow commissioners later chose her as Chair, and she has been reappointed twice to the USCIRF by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. As Chair of the USCIRF from 2004-2005, she presided over nationally and internationally acclaimed Commission studies on human rights guarantees in the national constitutions of predominantly Muslim countries, and on the expedited removal process for U.S. asylum seekers.
As a current partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Bansal leads the firm's appellate litigation and complex legal issues practice. In addition to her service on USCIRF, she also serves as a Commissioner on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's bipartisan Election Modernization Task Force; a Trustee of the national Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; an Advisory Board Member of the Clinton Global Initiative; a member of the Board of Directors of the National Women's Law Center; a Board Member of the New York City Bar Justice Center; a Board Member of the Fund for Modern Courts; a United States Advisory Committee Member of Human Rights Watch; and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She co-chairs the Appellate Committee of the Commercial and Federal Litigation of the New York State Bar Association. In 2006, she received the "Woman of Power and Influence Award" from the National Organization for Women at that organization's fortieth anniversary dinner. In November 2006, she was named to the gubernatorial transition team for New York Governor-Elect Eliot Spitzer and as a co-chair of the transition team of New York Attorney General-Elect Andrew Cuomo.
In a "Public Lives" profile of her in 1999, the New York Times referred to her as a "legal superstar" and a "nimble, unorthodox thinker interested in art and literature" who "was attracted to the law's blend of the philosophical and pragmatic." She has appeared as a commentator on legal issues and U.S. Supreme Court matters on CNN, C-SPAN and PBS news programs.
