Trivia

His father Louis Zabel was a Russian emigrant, his mother Anne Rothenberg a Romanian emigrant.

Human Rights First renamed its annual award after William D. Zabel.

In 1969 he co-founded Schulte Roth & Zabel, a full service law firm.

After graduating, in the 1960s, he worked as a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi. During his time in Mississippi, he helped expand Black voting rights, and was shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Attended Princeton University earning his bachelor's degree in 1958.

Has a son David.

In 1967 he wrote an amicus brief for the American Civil Liberties Union in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case named Loving v. Virginia, which unanimously ruled that Virginia's ban on interracial marriage was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Attended Harvard Law School graduating in 1961.

Princeton University established the William D. Zabel '58 Professorship of Human Rights in his honor.