Paul Weiss

Paul Weiss may refer to:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is a law firm headquartered on Sixth Avenue in New York City. The firm practices corporate, personal representation, entertainment law and litigation practices, and won the honor of having the "litigation department of the year for 2006", according to The American Lawyer The firm is also noted for corporate work in mergers and acquisitions (especially in the private equity arena), capital markets regulation, investment funds formation, high-yield debt offerings, bankruptcy and corporate reorganization, employee benefits and executive compensation, finance, intellectual property, real estate and tax law. In addition to its headquarters in New York, Paul, Weiss maintains offices in Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Delaware, Toronto, London, Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong.

History

Paul Weiss (philosopher)

Paul Weiss (May 19, 1901 – July 5, 2002) was an American philosopher.

Background

Paul Weiss grew up on the lower east side of New York City. His father, Samuel Weiss (d. 1917), was a Hungarian emigrant who moved from Europe in the 1890s. He worked as a tinsmith, a coppersmith, and a boilermaker. Paul Weiss's mother, Emma Rothschild (Weiss) (d. 1915), was a German emigrant who worked as a servant until she married Samuel. Born into a Jewish family, Paul lived among other Jewish families in a working-class neighborhood in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Originally given the Hebrew name "Peretz," Weiss says in his autobiography that the name "Paul" was his "registered name" and "part of his mother's attempt to move upward in the American world." He had three brothers, two older and one younger.

Weiss graduated from Public School #77. He later enrolled at the High School of Commerce where he learned shorthand and how to type; however, he felt that he did not benefit much from the available courses. His grades began to fall, and with a little encouragement from his mother, he eventually dropped out of high school. After working many odd jobs, Weiss enrolled at the College of the City of New York in 1924. He took free night classes in philosophy, graduating cum laude in 1927. At the College of the City of New York, he studied with Morris R. Cohen, who awakened in him an interest in the American pragmatist and logician Charles Sanders Peirce. During this period he also met Victoria Brodkin (d. 1953), whom he later married on October 27, 1928. They had two children: Judith, who was born in 1935, and Jonathan, who was born in 1939.