HIS name may not be as famous as those of his clients, but with his passing, a curtain has quietly been drawn over one of the most poignant eras of American post-war history.
The name William Kunstler will not ring many bells in the forum of US justice. The lawyer, who died this week at the age of 76, not only made his name and eked out a living defending the eternal underdog, he also almost single-handedly took the civil rights and other leftist movements of the 60s and 70s and gave them a voice in the crusty courtrooms of conservative America.
When he died of heart failure on Labour Day, the Jewish New Yorker was just coming off working on the defence of some World Trade Centre bombing suspects, as well as that of Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican immigrant who shot a crowded New Jersey commuter train in 1993.
That he should end his colourful career taking up the cases of defendants so hated that no one else would touch them was typical of a man who the Washington Post this week eulogised as a 'guerilla in the theatre of justice'.
Mr Kunstler's death has been mourned as the loss of one of the very few lawyers in the pocket-lining world of American legal practice who would take on clients purely out of a desire to thumb his nose at the capitalist establishment.
Neither did anyone omit to mention that in so doing, he was also happy to grab his own share of the celebrity that rubbed off from some of his more famous (and infamous) customers.
After a routine career start as a wartime intelligence officer and suburban tax lawyer, Mr Kunstler's conscience drove him towards the black rights movement, where he represented Martin Luther King and Muslim activist Malcolm X in legal battles against existing segregationist laws. He then landed the defining job of his career, defending the legendary Chicago Seven, including anti-establishment gurus Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who were up on conspiracy charges after a riot outside the Democratic Convention in 1968.