Carl Levin

Carl Milton Levin (June 28, 1934 – July 29, 2021) was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2015. Born in Detroit, Levin graduated from Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School. He worked as the general counsel of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 1964 to 1967, and as a special assistant attorney general for the Michigan Attorney General's Office. Levin was a member of the Detroit City Council from 1969 to 1977, serving as the council's president for the last four of those years. In 1978, Levin ran for the United States Senate, defeating Republican incumbent Robert P. Griffin. Levin was re-elected in 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008. On March 7, 2013, Levin announced that he would not seek a seventh term. On March 9, 2015, Levin announced he was joining the Detroit-based law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP. At the same time, he founded the Levin Center at Wayne State University Law School, dedicated to "strengthening the integrity, transparency, and accountability of public and private institutions by promoting and supporting bipartisan, fact-based oversight; advancing good governance, particularly with respect to the legislative process; and promoting civil discourse on current issues of public policy". Levin became Michigan's senior senator in 1995, and he was the longest-serving senator in the state's history. At the time of his retirement Levin was the fourth longest-serving incumbent in the U.S. Senate. He released his memoir, Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate, in March 2021. It was published by Wayne State University Press.