Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1943, he graduated from Columbia Law School with a Bachelor of Laws, where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Augustus Noble Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then for Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of the United States Supreme Court from October 1944 to April 1946. Professional career and government service He worked for Wall Street law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley & McCloy, then Hale, Stimson, Russell & Nickerson. From 1970 until his appointment to the bench in October 1977, Nickerson was a name partner and litigator with the firm Nickerson, Kramer, Lowenstein, Nessen, Kamin & Soll, now known as Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. Entering politics, he became the first Democrat to win a countywide seat in Nassau County, New York since 1912, when regular Republicans and the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party split the Republican vote. In his three three-year terms as county executive, Nickerson took a more liberal approach than his Republican predecessors, often working to expand social services for the needy in what was then one of the nation's fastest-growing counties. He was an early advocate of environmental protection, expanded Nassau County's park system, recruited college graduates for the police force, and favored progressive zoning regulations to open up housing opportunities to minorities and the poor. He later described his years in the post as reorienting "government to concern itself with human beings and their problems." Pressed by Robert F. Kennedy, who recognized Nickerson's political talents, he ran for the United States Senate in 1968 but lost in the Democratic primary. Nickerson was occasionally seen as an unusual member of the Democratic Party. Referring to the man who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, Nickerson once explained, "Adlai Stevenson turned me into a Democrat. I was active in his first campaign, and I stayed active. He brought in other people like myself who had intense interests about government, of ideals and principles." Federal judicial service Nickerson was nominated by President Jimmy Carter on August 16, 1977, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York vacated by Judge Orrin Grimmell Judd. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 20, 1977, and received his commission on October 21, 1977. He assumed senior status