Samuel Simon Leibowitz was a Romanian-born American criminal defense attorney. He was best known for representing the Scottsboro Boys, and later became a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.