While in private practice, he successfully argued WMCA, Inc. v. Lomenzo, 377 U.S. 633 (1964), before the Supreme Court of the United States, a redistricting case decided in tandem with Reynolds v.
[12] Sand's former law clerks include law professor Ann Althouse, Columbia University's General Counsel Jane E. Booth,[13] the Hearst Corporation's Senior Vice President and General Counsel Eve Burton,[14] Massachusetts Appeals Court Associate Justice Gary S. Katzmann,[15] Microsoft's Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy Tom Rubin,[16] Ernst & Young's Global Vice Chair and General Counsel Michael S. Solender,[17][18] former interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Alan Vinegrad, Partner in the Real Estate group at Sullivan and Cromwell Arthur S. Adler,[19] and Colorado Fourth Judicial District judge Eric Bentley.
Two years into his time as a federal judge, Sand was assigned the landmark desegregation case United States v. City of Yonkers.
[20] In his 1985 decision, he wrote, "the extreme concentration of subsidized housing that exists in southwest Yonkers today is the result of a pattern and practice of racial discrimination by city officials, pursued in response to constituent pressures to select or support only sites that would preserve existing patterns of racial segregation.
[21] Sand appeared in the documentary film, Finding Nico,[22] to recount one of his more famous cases that didn't go to trial.
He was presiding over a criminal indictment of the actor, Nico Minardos, and other defendants who had been caught in an FBI sting operation for allegedly conspiring to ship arms to Iran.
Rudy Giuliani and his then-deputy United States Attorney, Lorna Schofield, were prosecuting Minardos, who was represented by the famed anti-government lawyer William Kunstler and his flamboyant co-counsel, Ron Kuby.
Minardos appeared on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace to claim his actions had been authorized by the Reagan Administration.