Carlin Meyer

Last updated
Carlin Meyer
Born (1948-09-07) September 7, 1948 (age 75)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Education Radcliffe College-Harvard University (AB)
Rutgers University (JD)
Yale University (LLM)
Employer New York Law School (1988-2015)

Carlin Meyer (born September 7, 1948) is an American law professor, feminist, and expert on issues of sex, sexuality, family and gender. Meyer is professor emerita at New York Law School.

Contents

Early life

Carlin Meyer was born on September 7, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois. Meyer's father, Leonard B. Meyer (1918–2007), was a noted musicologist and composer, and her mother, Lee Malakoff (1921–2017), was a home furnishings buyer and homemaker. [1] Meyer grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, attending the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where she was the features editor of the school newspaper, The Midway. [2] She has two sisters: Muffie and Erica.

Education and activism

Meyer went on to attend Radcliffe College (Harvard University) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Radcliffe, she became a passionate feminist and anti-Vietnam War activist. She joined a feminist group called Bread and Roses. Meyer states that, “our early talk was about how women always ended up with purple hands from running the mimeo machines rather than serving as leading speakers or scholars…from there it was a short hop to the role of law in promoting male dominance.” [3]

Meyer was a member of the Harvard section of the left-wing organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She was a founding member of SDS's November Action Coalition (NAC) and also participated in, and helped to organize, the occupation of Harvard's University Hall in April 1969. She protested, among other things, Harvard's support of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the presence of Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) on campus, and Harvard's institutional racism. [4] In a letter dated April 7, 1969, to The Harvard Crimson, Meyer, alongside other SDS members, opposed the support of ROTC by Harvard's then-president, Nathan Pusey:

To conclude: President Pusey and the Corporation want ROTC to stay because they support the U.S. military and the policies it carries out; we feel that ROTC must go because we oppose the policies of the United States and we oppose the military that perpetrates them. The lines are clearly drawn; the time to take sides is now. [5]

For her role in the protest Meyer was arrested and convicted but later acquitted. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe in 1969. Following graduation, she participated in the building of Arcosanti, an experimental town in central Arizona spearheaded by the well-known Italian architect, Paolo Soleri, who sought to minimize the effect of urbanization on the natural environment. [6]

In the summer of 1971, before starting Rutgers Law School, Meyer joined the National Lawyers Guild, after being “recruited by a funky group of lawyers who were talking law and politics at a diner where [she] stopped en route from Chicago to New Jersey.” [7] While in law school, she remained active in public protest and organizing, enrolling in the urban poverty, gender and law, and constitutional law clinics. As part of her clinic work, she wrote an appellate brief to help halt U.S. intervention in the Cambodian Civil War. [8] In addition, she worked for a local chapter of the Black Lung Association in Beckley, West Virginia. [9] Meyer graduated with a J.D. from Rutgers in 1974. [10]

Career

Following law school, Meyer worked in-house at the national office of the National Lawyers Guild in New York City. [11] In 1975, with a small group of fellow lawyers, Meyer co-founded the law collective, Gladstein, Meyer & Reif (now incorporated as Gladstein, Reif, & Meginniss, LLP). [12] Meyer left after two years and led the first U.S. delegation of lawyers (under the auspices of the National Lawyers Guild) to China, in the normalization of China–United States relations. [13] [14]

From 1977 to 1981, Meyer worked as assistant general counsel to District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest trade union for public employees in the United States. In 1980–1, while working for the AFSCME, she was a Charles H. Revson Fellow at Columbia University. [15] [16] Then, in 1982, she worked in the Civil Rights Bureau in the New York State Attorney General's Office, before being appointed Labor Bureau chief in 1983. Meyer worked for the attorney general until 1987. [17] She also served as the President of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. [18]

Meyer went on to study at Yale University, after having been inspired by a night course in American legal history taught by the legal historian and law professor, Morton Horwitz. She received her LLM from Yale in 1988, at which point Meyer joined the New York Law School faculty as a professor. [19]

At NYLS, Meyer went on to teach courses on labor and employment law, feminist jurisprudence, family law, legal ethics, evidence, and lawyering. [20] In addition, she served as the executive director of the Diane Abbey Law Institute for Children and Families at NYLS. She served on the New York State Legislative Ethics Commission as well as on Mayor David Dinkins’ Commission on the Status of Women. [21] After 27 years of teaching, Meyer became professor emerita in January 2015. [22] Meyer currently serves on the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and as part-time counsel for the New York State Assembly Committee on Ethics and Guidance. [23] [24]

Meyer is a member of the Society of American Law Teachers, the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Law and Society Association. [25]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Gilligan</span> American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist (born 1936)

Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist, best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships.

Ann Fagan Ginger is an American lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the founder and Executive Director Emerita of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catharine A. MacKinnon</span> American feminist scholar and legal activist

Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardine Dohrn</span> American radical activist, law professor

Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen DeCrow</span> American lawyer and feminist

Karen DeCrow was an American attorney, author, activist and feminist. She served as the fourth national president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1974 to 1977. She was also a strong supporter of equal rights for men in child custody decisions, arguing for a "rebuttable presumption" of shared custody after divorce. She also asserted that men as well as women should be allowed the decision not to become a parent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Franzese</span> American legal scholar

Paula Ann Franzese is an American legal scholar based in New Jersey who focuses on government ethics and property law. She is the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law at the Seton Hall University School of Law. Franzese is an educator who has been named one of the 26 best law teachers in the United States. She is also a prominent advocate for government ethics reform, a spokesperson for legal education, a housing advocate, and an author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Minow</span> American legal scholar

Martha Louise Minow is an American legal scholar and the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. She served as the 12th Dean of Harvard Law School between 2009 and 2017 and has taught at the Law School since 1981.

Naomi Esther Jaffe is a former undergraduate student of Herbert Marcuse and member of the Weather Underground Organization. Jaffe was recently the Executive Director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial foundation for women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Ayers</span> American professor and activist

William Charles Ayers is an American retired professor and former militant organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow what they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin D. Ginsburg</span> American legal scholar (1932–2010)

Martin David Ginsburg was an American lawyer who specialized in tax law and was the husband of American lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He taught law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and was of counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of the American law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita L. Allen</span> American lawyer (born 1953)

Anita LaFrance Allen is the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was formerly Vice Provost for Faculty from 2013 to 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily C. Hewitt</span> American judge (born 1944)

Emily Clark Hewitt is an American lawyer and minister who served as a former judge and the chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Rhode</span> American jurist, writer, feminist, and professor (1952–2021)

Deborah Lynn Rhode was an American jurist. She was the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the nation's most frequently cited scholar in legal ethics. From her early days at Yale Law School, her work revolved around questions of injustice in the practice of law and the challenges of identifying and redressing it. Rhode founded and led several research centers at Stanford devoted to these issues, including its Center on the Legal Profession, Center on Ethics and Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship; she also led the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford. She coined the term "The 'No-Problem' Problem".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Crary</span> American philosopher

Alice Crary is an American philosopher who currently holds the positions of University Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York City and Visiting Fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, U.K..

Rosalyn Baxandall was an American historian of women's activism and feminist activist.

Mari Ruti was a Finnish-Canadian philosopher. She had served as Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory and of Gender and Sexuality Studies on the graduate faculty at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, and as an Undergraduate Instructor at their Mississauga campus. She was an interdisciplinary scholar within the theoretical humanities working at the intersection of contemporary theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, trauma theory, posthumanist ethics, gender, and sexuality studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in law</span> Involvement of women in the study and practice of law

Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.

Brenda Feigen is an American feminist activist, film producer, and attorney.

Marilyn Salzman Webb, also known as Marilyn Webb, is an American author, activist, professor, feminist and journalist. She has been involved in the civil rights, feminist, anti-Vietnam war and end-of-life care movements, and is considered one of the founders of the Second-wave women's liberation movement.

Holly Maguigan was an American criminal defense lawyer and professor of law. She was a leader in the legal movement that promotes the self-defense defense in domestic violence cases.

References

  1. ↑ "Lee Meyer" . Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  2. ↑ The Midway, Vol. 40, No. 5, published 22 Jan 1965; Chicago, IL: https://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/uploaded/Midway_40.05_65-0122OCR.pdf
  3. ↑ "Carlin Meyer". Feminist Law Professors. July 19, 2007. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  4. ↑ "1969, Echoing". Harvard Magazine. May–June 2009. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  5. ↑ "LINES DRAWN ON ROTC". The Harvard Crimson. April 7, 1969. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  6. ↑ "City of the Future Rises In the Desert". The San Francisco Examiner. November 9, 1971. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  7. ↑ "Carlin Meyer". Feminist Law Professors. July 19, 2007. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  8. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Just Families: New York Law School.
  9. ↑ "3 Graduate Students To Help Local Black Lung Association". Beckley Post-Herald. June 26, 1973. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  10. ↑ The AALS Directory of Law Teachers. West Publishing Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0847684595.
  11. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Just Families: New York Law School.
  12. ↑ The AALS Directory of Law Teachers. West Publishing Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0847684595.
  13. ↑ Preliminary Inventory of the National Lawyers Guild Records, 1936–1999: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft9f59p17c/entire_text/
  14. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Just Families: New York Law School.
  15. ↑ The AALS Directory of Law Teachers. West Publishing Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0847684595.
  16. ↑ "Charles II Revson Fellows 1980". Chicago Metro News. September 27, 1980. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  17. ↑ The AALS Directory of Law Teachers. West Publishing Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0847684595.
  18. ↑ "True 'Lions of the Bar' Invisible to Some". The New York Times. January 12, 1982. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  19. ↑ The AALS Directory of Law Teachers. West Publishing Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0847684595.
  20. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Just Families: New York Law School.
  21. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Esq., NYS Legislative Ethics Commission.
  22. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Just Families: New York Law School.
  23. ↑ BOARD OF DIRECTORS, NYCLU.
  24. ↑ State Contracts, Office of the New York State Comptroller.
  25. ↑ Carlin Meyer, Esq., NYS Legislative Ethics Commission.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.