User:Donald Scarinci/sandbox

Donald Scarinci (born June 2, 1956) is an American attorney and scholar of United States constitutional law. He is the founding partner of Scarinci Hollenbeck, a 50+ attorney law firm with offices in New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC.

Among Scarinci’s works on the subject of the Constitution and government are his books David Brearley and the Making of the United States Constitution, published in 2004, and Redistricting and the Politics of Reform , published in 2010. He is editor of The Constitutional Law Reporter and a weekly columnist for PolitickerNJ. His columns focus on the history and law behind contemporary issues in the news. He also authored a chapter in the Thomson Reuters publication Inside the Minds: Representing Municipalities in Litigation .

Scarinci lectures on Constitutional law for the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education (ICLE). He also writes a weekly column about current United States Supreme Court decisions for the Constitutional Law Reporter, an educational legal blog that updates regularly on case law and current events pertaining to constitutional law. The site also has educational information on U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Chief Justices and information about important Supreme Court cases.

In addition to his work as an attorney, Scarinci is also a noted numismatist and a semi-professional photographer. He was appointed to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Commission (CCAC) by Secretary of the Treasury, Edward Snow, in 2005, Henry M. Paulson Jr in 2008, by Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in 2012, and by Secretary Jacob J. Lew in 2016. His photography has been exhibited in art galleries in New York, New Jersey and California.

Early life and Education
Scarinci, an only child, was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was raised in nearby Union City. He attended Holy Family Grammar School and graduated from Union Hill High School in 1974. During high school, he was an honor student, the Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, a member of the chess team, and the debate club. It was in high school where Scarinci met Senator Robert Menendez, a lifelong friend, with whom he worked on a petition to create an elected Board of Education in Union City, New Jersey in 1973. That campaign launched Senator Menendez’s career in government as a School Board Member, a Mayor (1986), a state Assemblyman (1988), a state Senator (1991) Member of the House of Representatives (1992), and a United States Senator (2006) where he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 114th United States Congress (2013).

In 1978, Scarinci received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Montclair State University, where he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Montclarion. He then attended New York University, earning his Master of Arts degree in English Language and Literature in 1980. He received his Juris Doctor from Seton Hall Law School in 1983, and was admitted to the New Jersey bar and the Pennsylvania bar in 1983, the Washington, DC bar in 1984 and the New York bar in 1991.

Legal Career
Scarinci Hollenbeck was formed in 1988 as a six-attorney law firm in Totowa, New Jersey. It is now one of the top 40 largest law firms in New Jersey. The firm now employs more than 50 attorneys and has offices in New York City, Lyndhurst New Jersey, Jersey City, New Jersey, Red Bank, New Jersey, and Washington DC. Throughout his legal career, Scarinci has worked as an attorney for various public entities. He has represented municipalities, school districts, colleges, regional authorities, state agencies and hospitals. Among many school districts as general and special legal counsel, he represented the Union City Public schools 1984-1985 and the West New York Board of Education He has represented Hudson County Community College from 1988 continuing to the present. Between 1990 and 1992, Scarinci served as General Counsel to the New Jersey State Assembly. In 2000, Scarinci served as legal counsel to the Trenton Team for Governor James McGreevey. He served as General Counsel to the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (NJCRDA) in Atlantic City, as Counsel to the New Jersey Transit Authority, and as General Counsel to Bergen County New Jersey Board of Freeholders.

As Managing Partner of Scarinci Hollenbeck, Scarinci expanded his legal practice repertoire to include business law, real estate and commercial development and government affairs. He has been involved in several large real estate projects in the State of New Jersey. He participated as an attorney in the projects that now compose the skyline of what are known as New Jersey’s Gold Coast projects from Guttenberg to Bayonne. Scarinci has simultaneously held the Chief Legal Counsel position for two of the state’s top 20 largest municipalities, the City of Passaic and the City of Union City. He currently serves as Corporation Counsel for both the City of Union City and the Town of West New York.

Political Affiliations
Scarinci is a lifelong Democrat. He has been actively involved in party politics since he first registered to vote in 1973. He participated as a Democratic County Committeeman in Union City working door to door to elect candidates to municipal, state and national office. He served as campaign photographer during the first campaign to elect United States Senator Bill Bradley in 1977 and 1978. He remained active in politics while he was in college, graduate school and law school, running unsuccessfully for a seat on the Union City Board of Education himself in 1982.|[xxv]

In 1990, Scarinci served as general counsel to the New Jersey State Assembly. In 2001, Scarinci was general counsel to the Democratic members of both the Congressional and Legislative Redistricting Commissions in New Jersey. He has provided advice to a number of Mayors and County Executives-elect and has served on three gubernatorial transition teams in New Jersey. Scarinci was Chief Legal Counsel to Governor-elect James E. McGreevey in 2001-2002. He also worked on the transition team for Mayor Bill Pascrell when he became mayor of Paterson in 1990, as well as the transition team for Margie Semler, former Mayor of Passaic, in 1993.

Publications on Government
Scarinci is the author of David Brearley and the Making of the United States Constitution, a historical biography about David Brearley, signer of the Constitution from the State of New Jersey and the first Federal District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey (1789). He also authored Redistricting and the Politics of Reform, published in 2010, which has been used as a primer on redistricting in states where the decennial process is performed by appointed commissions.

Scarinci is the editor of The Constitutional Law Reporter and a columnist for PolitickerNJ and NJ.Com. His columns focus on history and law of contemporary issues in the news. He authored a chapter in the Thompson Reuters publication Inside the Minds: Representing Municipalities in Litigation. His article on Congressional Redistricting in New Jersey was published in the Seton Hall Law Review.

Publications

 * “Inside The Minds” Representing Municipalities In Litigation: Leading Lawyers Analyze Recent Trends And Guide Municipal Clients In Litigation – Thomas Reuters/Aspatore, January 2013
 * Redistricting and the Politics of Reform – Independent Books, November 2010
 * David Brearley and the Making of the United States Constitution – New Jersey Heritage Press, June 2005
 * New ‘Pay to Play’ Law to Impact Public Contracting in New Jersey – Municipal Law Review, Volume 27, Number 3, September 2004
 * Congressional Redistricting in New Jersey- Seton Hall Law Review – Volume Thirty-Two, Number Four, 2003
 * Pay-to-Play Limits: Just More Curbs on Campaign Contributions - New Jersey Law Journal – April 28, 2003
 * New Jersey’s Experiment with Campaign Finance Reform – New Jersey Lawyer, April 2001
 * Contribution-Limits Law Sets Complex Standards – New Jersey Law Journal – May 3, 1993
 * The New Jersey Campaign Contributions and Expenditures Reporting Act: Is It Reform? – Seton Hall Legislative Journal, VOL. 18, Number 1, 1993
 * To Disclose or Not to Disclose – New Jersey Lawyer, September/October 1992
 * Ethics Enforcement: A New Role for the Local Finance Board – Municipal Bond News, June 1991

Teaching
Scarinci is a frequent lecturer on topics relating to Law and Numismatics. He participates with the New Jersey Institute of continuing Legal Education to create programs on constitutional law, using actors portraying historical characters like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Theodore Roosevelt. In 2015, the seminar with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was ranked by members of the New Jersey Bar as among the most popular ICLE seminar of the year.

As a numismatist, Scarinci appears as a frequent speaker on topics relating to numismatics and medallic art at national and international conferences. He has lectured at the American Numismatic Association, taught at the American Numismatic Society, Brookgreen Gardens, and the Forest Lawn Museum. He has traveled to conferences in England, Paris and Finland to speak about Medallic art for the British Museum and the Federation Internationale de la Medaille (FIDEM).

Numismatics
Scarinci has stated that his interest in numismatics began in grammar school and emerged from his love of history. He began collecting by assembling a portrait gallery of Roman emperors on ancient Roman silver denarii. After graduating from law school, his interests shifted to American history. He assembled an extensive collection of colonial American coins and Washingtonia. His collection of 1787 Fugio cents, the first penny denomination authorized by the continental congress and designed by Benjamin Franklin included 51 of the 58 known varieties, is one of the most complete collections in existence.

Scarinci later began to pursue art medals, small hand held sculpture designed by important artists whose monumental work often adorns public areas and occupies gallery space in the world’s finest museums. Eventually, Scarinci’s collection grew and has been cited as the largest privately held collection of art medals in United States. In 2005, Secretary of the Treasury, John W. Snow appointed Scarinci to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC). Scarinci was reappointed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. in 2008, by Timothy F. Geithner in 2012 and Jacob J. Lew in 2016. He is the longest serving member of this national board, created by Congress to review all coin and medal designs before they can be minted for public use.

Scarinci is a Fellow of the American Numismatic Society where he serves as a member of the J. Sanford Saltus Award Committee. He is a life member of the American Numismatic Association and member of the committee that selects the Annual lifetime achievement in medallic art award. He serves on the nomination committee for the Krause Coin of the Year Award. His book, Coin of the Year: Celebrating Three Decades of the Best in Coin Design and Craftmanship was published by Krause Publication in July, 2015. It is the standard reference for the series. He is also a frequent contributor to Medal Magazine.

Educational institutions that have asked Donald to lecture on medallic art and hand-held sculpture include the British Museum, Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, Forest Lawn Museum in California, and the International Federation for the Promotion of Medallic Art (FIDEM) and Penn State University. Medals from Scarinci’s collection are frequently loaned to museums for inclusion in exhibits. His British Art Society medals, along with his collection of the work of Ron Dutton were exhibited at the American Numismatic Society in 2012; his American and world art medals were exhibited at the Rack & Hamper Gallery in an exhibit Between the Wars in 2010. Prior to that, French art medals from his collection were exhibited and plated in a catalog for a WW1 exhibit, also at Rack & Hamper Gallery, in 2008.

Scarinci was a featured speaker in 2009 at the Samuel Dorsky symposium honoring the former past president of the American Sculpture Association, Marcel Jovine. He has often lectured at the request of collector organizations, including the American Numismatic Association (ANA) national shows and Summer Seminar, the Medal Collectors of America, the Colonial Coin Collectors Club, the Token and Medal Society, the American Numismatic Society (ANS), and annually at the New York Numismatic Club, the oldest coin club in America, of which he is a member.

In 2015, he was named to succeed Dick Johnson as Curator of Numismatic Art for the Belskie Museum of Art & Science in Closter, New Jersey. He is affiliated with a number of numismatic organizations.|[xlvii]

Photography
During high school and college Scarinci earned money for his education by working as an assistant to a professional photographer, Harold Bardes, who had a studio in Union City, New Jersey. Bardes was a successful commercial photographer who had previously served as the second president of the Professional Photographer’s Association (PPA) and had worked with noted photographers from New Jersey including Hugh W. Tribble, president of the Professional Photographers of America, and with MIT professor and inventor of the electronic flash, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton.

After a long hiatus, Scarinci returned to photography in 2010 to photograph his numismatic holdings. His passion for the lens was reignited and he made photographs which have been exhibited and sold in art galleries in New York, Los Angeles and New Jersey. His pictures have also appeared in various publications including Art Takes Miami and International Masters of Photography. Scarinci authors a photography blog where he writes a column about photography semi-monthly and posts his current art photography.

Personal Life
Scarinci met his wife, Lisa Burkhart Scarinci, when they were undergraduates at Montclair State University. As Scarinci attended law school in New Jersey, Lisa went to Harvard for her MBA. Lisa and Donald have two children, Elizabeth Scarinci, born in 1990 and Paul Scarinci, born in 1992.