Event will fete top local lawyers

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and the Massachusetts Bar Association said they plan to salute a number of lawyers and judges at their annual Excellence in the Law celebration at the Westin Waterfront in Boston on Tuesday.

Among those who will be honored at the event are Attorney General Martha Coakley, for her handling of Big Dig cases, and Andy Tarsy, whose bold stances as head of the Anti-Defamation League led to his dismissal and rehiring, the weekly and the association said.

According to stories in the Globe data base, Tarsy broke ranks with the national ADL in August, demanding that it acknowledge that an Armenian genocide had occurred in Turkey; the ADL's head fired Tarsy and then rehired him two weeks later, after acknowledging the massacres from 1915 to 1920 in the Ottoman-Turk empire were "tantamount to genocide."

Tarsy, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League New England office, announced his resignation several months later, a Globe story in December noted.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)