Nicholas DeBelleville Katzenbach served as U.S. attorney general from 1965 to 1966 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Katzenbach successfully defended the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most significant civil rights law since the Civil War. Katzenbach later served in the state department before returning to private law practice.

Katzenbach was born on January 17, 1922, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After high school, he enlisted in the air force and served during World War II. His aircraft was shot down over North Africa and he served the remainder of the war in a prison camp. After the war, he attended Princeton University and then Yale University Law School. Following his graduation from Yale in 1947, he became a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University in England. He read so many books while a prisoner that following his repatriation in 1944, Princeton University allowed him to graduate two years early. Upon his...