Michael Mukasey - Personal Background

Personal Background

Michael Mukasey's father was born near Baranavichy in the Russian Empire (modern-day Belarus) and emigrated to the U.S. in 1921. Michael Mukasey was born in the Bronx in 1941. Mukasey graduated in 1959 from the Ramaz School, a Modern Orthodox Jewish prep school in Manhattan. His wife, Susan, was later a teacher and headmistress of the lower school at Ramaz, and both of their children (Marc and Jessica) attended the school.

As an undergraduate student, Mukasey was the editorials editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1963. At Yale Law School he received his LL.B. in 1967. Mukasey practiced law for 20 years in New York City, serving for four years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in which he worked with Rudolph Giuliani. In 1976, he joined the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, to which he returned after retirement from the U.S. District Court. Mukasey began teaching at Columbia Law School in the Spring of 1993 and has taught there every spring semester since.

Mukasey's son Marc L. Mukasey, as of 2007, leads the white-collar criminal defense practice in the New York office of Bracewell & Giuliani. The Mukaseys have a professional relationship with Rudy Giuliani; Mukasey and son were also justice advisers to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Mukasey administered the oath of office to Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998.