Feinberg Reflects on 9/11 Compensation Fund's Lasting Impact on His Life

A quarter-century after the September 11 attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives, Kenneth Feinberg — the lawyer who spent three years administering the Victim Compensation Fund — reflects on how the work of assigning dollar values to irreplaceable lives quietly dismantled and rebuilt his understanding of justice, time, and what it means to be present for another human being in their grief. The fund itself was a legislative improvisation born of crisis, designed to move resources to devastated families without the cruelty of prolonged litigation, and Feinberg became its human instrument. What he fou