After resigning from the State Department, he became the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs at the Hoover Institution.
As a New York state administrative judge from 1975 to 1976, he handled the first major environmental action involving PCBs, specifically their discharge by General Electric into the Hudson River.
[1] After issuing an opinion holding GE liable despite its having been issue with a license, Sofaer worked with Peter Berle, then head of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Sarah Chassis, lead attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Jack Welch, then VP at GE to settle the case in an agreement joined by 17 environmental organizations.
This work led to Sofaer being recommended to a committee established by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (chaired by former White House Counsel Leonard Garment) to screen candidates for the federal district courts in New York state.
He agreed during this period to assist Libya in attempting to satisfy the United Nations Security Council resolutions issued against it concerning the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
After publicly obtaining a license for the work, however, Sofaer was attacked by some family members of the victims and criticized by U.S. officials opposed to any such negotiation.
Nonetheless, Sofaer was subject to a grand jury investigation into whether he had made false statements in applying for the license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control to represent Libya.