Civil rights scholar Michael Meltsner to speak at University of Richmond School of Law
September 20, 2007
Civil rights attorney, scholar and author, Michael Meltsner, will speak Oct. 2 at the University of Richmond School of Law about his work as a legal activist and litigator.
The talk will be held in the law school's Moot Court Room from 12-1 p.m., followed by a reception and book signing. The event is free and open to the public.
Meltsner is Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern Law School in Boston, where he also served as dean from 1979-84. He also has taught at Harvard and Columbia law schools.
His memoir, "The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer," offers an inside look at legal reform and includes portraits of Thurgood Marshall, William Kunstler and Derrick Bell. The book provides a critical analysis of early civil rights efforts to achieve social change through litigation and presents the personalities, policies and tactics that continue to shape reform efforts today.
Meltsner became active in the civil rights movement after graduating from Yale Law School, when he became the second white lawyer on the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He worked there with future Supreme Court associate justice Marshall, Bell and other notables, such as Anthony Amsterdam and Jack Greenburg. He filed hundreds of lawsuits to integrate Southern institutions and argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court.
Meltsner represented Muhammad Ali in the case that removed legal barriers to his return to the boxing ring after refusing induction into the Army, and he tried the case that led to the integration of Southern hospitals. He also was intricately involved in the capital punishment litigation that led to the Supreme Court's 1972 landmark decision in Furman v. Georgia.
Meltsner was a Guggenheim Fellow and Prize Fellow of the American Academy of Berlin. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Ford and Carnegie foundations. The latter sent him to South Africa in 1978 to help set up a law defense fund to advocate against apartheid. He is the author of five previous books, including "Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment" and the novel "Short Takes."