Deborah Malamud is a leader among legal academics who study issues of class and public policy, as well as an expert on labor and employment law. She teaches in the fields of labor and employment law, constitutional law, and class and the law. She anticipates also teaching in NYU School of Law’s new first-year class, The Administrative and Regulatory State.

Malamud was on the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School from 1992 to 2003, where she was the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law since 2001. Before embarking on her academic career, Malamud was a law clerk to Judge Louis Pollak, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court, and a lawyer at Bredhoff & Kaiser, a leading union-side labor law firm, located in Washington, D.C. Malamud was a visiting professor at NYU School of Law in Spring 2002.

Her contributions to the study of class and the law focus on how the law reflects and helps to shape our understanding of what it means to be a member of the middle class in the United States. Her work on the New Deal illuminates the interaction between class and the law through close examination of the development and public defense of labor and welfare policies that drew boundaries between different types of workers. By looking at how and why government officials decided, for example, that white-collar workers ought to receive special treatment in federal relief programs, or that certain kinds of white-collar workers ought not be paid overtime because to treat them like “clock-punchers” would offend their dignity, she demonstrates that the law played an active role in defining class boundaries and in protecting them against erosion during the Great Depression.

Malamud has also explored related issues in contemporary settings, including the increasingly important debates about whether affirmative action policies should be restructured along lines of class rather than race, and what the complexities and consequences of such a restructuring would be. Rather than analyzing legal doctrines concerning employment, race, and class as internal matters of legal reasoning alone, Malamud has contributed to understanding the dynamic relationships between law and the social, political, and cultural contexts that it both reflects and helps to create. Representative publications include “Engineering the Middle Classes: Class Line-Drawing in New Deal Hours Legislation,” Michigan Law Review (1998); “Affirmative Action, Diversity, and the Black Middle Class,” Colorado Law Review (1997); and “Class-Based Affirmative Action: Lessons and Caveats,” Texas Law Review (1996).

Malamud received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was the articles editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Malamud, whose parents still live in Brighton Beach, is pleased to return to what she still calls “the City” after 25 years in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Ann Arbor. Her visiting semester convinced her that the rich diversity and high energy of New York are perfectly echoed in the student body and faculty of NYU School of Law. She looks forward to pursuing her existing interests in legal history, labor law, and social policy through teaching and faculty colloquia. Perhaps most of all, she is excited by the unknown. New York offers myriad ways to confront significant issues in contemporary American society and culture. She cannot wait to see which of its many paths she will choose to explore.

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Return to “Café Society”

At the event, Professor Harold Koh of Yale; R. May Lee (’90), founder and chief executive officer of MarketBoy and a trustee of the Law School; Professor Arthur Miller of Harvard; NYU School of Law Professor William Nelson (’65); Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Professor Susan Stabile of St. John’s University; and, by video, Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave tributes to the guest of honor. The audience included notable professors, judges, lawyers, university trustees, and students.

Dean Richard Revesz gave a traditional welcome to Herbert Hirschhorn (’32), one of the Law School’s oldest alumni, and introduced the Annual Survey editor-in-chief Rachel Chanin (’03). Each year, Chanin explained, the spring issue of the Annual Survey is dedicated to an outstanding figure in American law.

Stabile began what would become a comical hour-and-a-half by saying, “Most of the stories I can tell you, John could tell you better himself.” Stabile described her first meeting with a “young and at least relatively attractive” Sexton, who was then the coach of her high school debate team. She described him as “my friend, my mentor, and my second father.”

The next tribute, from Miller, Sexton’s teacher at Harvard, was uncharacteristically emotional and lined with humor. Miller said that his is a world of a small number of great friends. “I have very few friends, not like John,” he said. “What I really think is that John is the brother I never had.”

He offered anecdotes suggesting that he and his former student have not always had such a harmonious relationship. In Miller’s Civil Procedure class, Sexton was a live-wire of a student, right from day one. “[It was] cheek and jowl,” Miller said. “Hand-to-hand combat. . .mano a mano.” Following this first class, Sexton went to Miller’s office to make amends, “and then for the first time, but not the last time, I heard his immortal words,” said Miller. “‘You’re the greatest, you’re the man.’ ”

Miller appointed Sexton to teach a segment of a course on supplemental jurisdiction in his second and third years of law school. One of his first students was Koh.

“It was with great bemusement that we watched this bearded Paul Bunyan of a man teach Civil Procedure,” said Koh, who found his young professor inspiring. “Your success was his success, your learning was his triumph.”

He recalled when Sexton encouraged a tentative student by saying, “Let it out big fella. I know it’s in there!” When the student finally blurted out his comment, Koh said, “John bear hugged him and we all cheered.” Nelson shared some admiring words about Sexton’s capacities as a dean. “He helped us individually, and he demanded that we make a commitment to build an institution far greater than the sum of its individual parts,” Nelson explained. Clinton focused on “John’s vision and devotion to the public service.”

Lee said that it was not until she met Sexton that she realized “law and lore were actually homonyms, which seems appropriate in John’s lexicon.” She also spoke about his sincerity. “You might tend to think that his gestures are excessive and ungenuine, but it’s not true,” she said. “John’s dreams are big enough for us all. When we share his dreams, we work a little harder, do a little better, and become a better person.”

Sotomayor praised Sexton’s dedication to the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program. Calabresi added that Sexton, as a dean who understood American history, has a deep capacity for legal scholarship and an evident love of people that is “more nearly unique than rare.”

Last to speak was the event honoree himself, who modestly attributed his success as dean to mechanisms that were already in place at NYU School of Law. He referenced a conversation he once had with James Vorenberg, then dean of Harvard Law School, who called to congratulate him when he was first appointed.

“John, we’re proud of you,” Vorenberg said. “We want to assure you that not even a person of your formidable talent will be able sink a ship as mighty as NYU School of Law.” Sexton professed his belief that “the Law School will just get better from here.”

Allen, the Nusbaum Professor of Law and Business and director of the Center for Law and Business, came to NYU in 1997, following 12 years as chancellor of the Court of Chancery in Delaware, widely considered the leading U.S. trial court for questions of business and corporation law. At the University, Allen is on the Law School faculty and a clinical professor of business in the Finance Department of the Stern School of Business.

Franck, the Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law Emeritus, is a leader in the field of international law and formerly the director of the Center for International Studies. Franck has acted as legal advisor or counsel to many foreign governments, including Kenya, El Salvador, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As an advocate before the International Court of Justice, he has successfully represented Chad and is currently representing Bosnia in a suit brought against Serbia under the Genocide Convention. From 1986 to 1993, he served on the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Law. He is the author of more than 20 books, most recently The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism (Oxford University Press, 1999), and is a two-time Guggenheim Fellowship winner.

“Election to the American Academy is an honor that acknowledges the best of all scholarly fields and professions. Newly elected fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes those who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines,” said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks.

Allen and Franck join several Law School faculty who have been elected to the academy over the years: Anthony Amsterdam; Jerome Bruner; Jerome Cohen; Norman Dorsen; Ronald Dworkin; Stephen Holmes; Thomas Nagel; Burt Neuborne; John Reid; John Sexton; Richard Stewart; and Joseph Weiler.

The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” The academy has elected as fellows the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The installation ceremony began with an opening pronouncement by S. Andrew Schaffer, senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the University, after which Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered remarks and read a mayoral proclamation declaring September 26 to be “John Sexton Day” in New York City.

“I salute the leaders of New York University in selecting John Sexton as their new president,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “His intellect and vitality are essential to the vitality of the city.” The mayor added that while New York is known as the leading city for finance and culture, it is also the center of higher education.

The mayor read from his proclamation: “From the performing arts to international finance, from public school classrooms to biomedical labs, NYU is intricately linked to every aspect of what is important and exciting in the life of this city. The ideas and information, the creative and intellectual capital generated here at the Washington Square campus and at the NYU Medical Center make NYU one of the city’s greatest assets.”

NYU Board of Trustees Chair Martin Lipton (’54) officiated at the formal installation of Sexton as the University’s president. Paying tribute to Sexton’s three immediate predecessors, James Hester, John Brademas, and L. Jay Oliva, all in attendance, Lipton said, “In large measure their service is what has made this University great…We have no doubt that we will move NYU along its upward trajectory. We are blessed with the right man at the right time.”

In his own address, Sexton focused on the environment of change in higher education and the nature of a leadership university for the 21st century.

The ceremony was part of a week-long set of events marking the formal launch of a new NYU leadership team. Other events included receptions for students and administrators, a dinner for newly inducted trustees, a set of academic panels exploring subjects ranging from religion to neural science, and a daylong conference of some 20 university leaders from around the world whose institutions are members of the League of World Universities.

John Sexton, the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law, was named NYU’s president-designate in May 2001. He was dean of NYU School of Law for 14 years. Before coming to NYU, he served as law clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court; Judge David Bazelon, U.S. Court of Appeals; and Judge Harold Leventhal, U.S. Court of Appeals. Sexton received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Fordham University, and earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Reprinted with permission of NYU Today.

On this milestone in Law School history—six new chairs in a single year—Dean Revesz said, “I am delighted that Alan, George, Norma, Wayne, Tony, and Lenny have chosen to support the Law School in this very special way. A chaired professorship is one of the most meaningful gifts that a donor can make. It is a wonderful way to establish a family legacy and ensure that the tradition of excellence will be carried on for years to come. Chaired professorships are also crucial in our effort to recruit and retain the finest faculty in legal academia. These distinguished alumni have found a wonderful way to give back to the community that is so proud of their achievements.”

Judge Jacob Fuchsberg (’35) was a prominent trial lawyer and judge who served on the New York State Court of Appeals from 1975 to 1983. Before becoming a judge, he was a partner at Fuchsberg & Fuchsberg, the firm he started with his two brothers. He litigated several notable cases, including Ergas v. Barricini, which in 1963 resulted in the first million-dollar tort award, and the “Baby Lenore” case, which helped liberalize abortion laws. He was a trustee of NYU School of Law, an honorary director of the Law Alumni Association, and president of the Law Review Alumni Association. In 1977, he received the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Medal. Alan Fuchsberg is the managing partner of The Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Firm, where his practice focuses on personal injury and civil rights matters. He is the former chair of the employment rights committee of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (2000); a former member of the medical malpractice committee (1993-1997) and the committee on professional and judicial ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; and a director of the New York State Trial Lawyers association since 1993. He is also affiliated with the 9-11 Pro Bono Program of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He and his sister, Rosalind Fuchsberg Kaufman (’77), also served as Reunion chairs.

Lowy received a B.A. from NYU Washington Square College in 1953. As a student at NYU School of Law, he was an editor of the Law Review and a member of the Moot Court Board. After finishing law school and serving two years in the U.S. Army, Lowy joined the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1957, became a partner in 1965, and has remained with the firm ever since. From 1983 to 1988, he taught at the Law School as an adjunct professor, and in 1991, he was awarded the Vanderbilt Medal. He was a member of the Council on the Future of the Law School, and served as a Reunion co-chair in 1995 and 2000. He is a member of the board of advisors of the NYU Center for Law and Business. Lowy has been a trustee of the Law School since 1991. He also funds the George Lowy Scholarship Fund at NYU School of Law.

After receiving a J.D. from NYU School of Law, Paige started a law practice in Lower Manhattan with her husband, Samuel Paige (LL.M. ’51), in 1948. She later founded the Astronautics Corporation of America with her brother, Nathaniel Zelazo, in 1959. Paige served as an executive, board member, and chairman of the company for 41 years. She also served as an executive vice president and director of Kearfott Guidance & Navigation Corporation after Astronautics acquired the company in 1988 until her retirement in 2000. Paige has been a Law School trustee since 1994. In 1991, she was given the Law Alumni Association’s Alumni Achievement Award, and in 1996 she was given the Judge Edward Weinfeld Award during her 50th class reunion. She has funded the Norma Z. Paige Scholarships since the 1980s.

Perry started his legal career as an associate at a large Seattle law firm. After finishing his LL.M. in tax at NYU School of Law, he joined McCaw Cellular, a major wireless company, and served as executive vice president and general counsel (1976-1985), as president (1985-1989), and as vice chairman (1989-1994). In 1994, he helped negotiate the acquisition of McCaw Cellular by AT&TWireless Services, Inc., and then served as vice chairman of AT&T Wireless from 1994 to 1997. He then joined Nextlink Communications, a new fiber optic communications company, and served as its chief executive officer from 1997 to 1999. In 2000, he became chief executive officer of Edge Wireless LLC, an affiliate of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. that operates in parts of the western United States. He joined the Advisory Board of the Graduate Tax Program at NYU School of Law in 1998, and is a member of the board’s technology committee.

Welters began his career as an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1979, he became the executive assistant to Senator Jacob Javits. In 1981, he was appointed director of federal affairs for Amtrak and shortly thereafter was promoted to assistant vice president of corporate development. In 1983, he joined the Reagan Administration as associate deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Welters is currently president and chief executive officer of AmeriChoice, a health care firm he founded, which provides health care services for state Medicaid programs. He has been a Law School trustee since 1997. He was the 2002 recipient of the Law Alumni Association’s Alumni Achievement Award, served as co-chair of his class Reunion committee in 2002, and is an honorary member of the NYU chapter of the Order of the Coif. Welters, together with his wife Beatrice, funds the An-Bryce Scholarship Program at NYU School of Law.

Wilf received a J.D. from Georgetown University in 1972 and a B.A. from Boston University. He is currently president of Garden Homes Inc., a construction and real estate development company in New Jersey, which was founded in the 1950s by his father and his uncle, and which today is one of that state’s largest residential and commercial builders. In 1997, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve a five-year term on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Wilf has been a trustee of the Law School since September 2001. He also serves on the Tax Law Advisory Board and funds the Wilf Family Graduate Tax Scholarship at NYU School of Law.

In addition to being the Joseph Straus Professor of Law, Professor Joseph Weiler is University Professor and holds the European Union Jean Monnet Chair. Weiler directs the Hauser Global Law School Program and the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice.

A world-renowned scholar in the law of the European Union and international economic law, Weiler came to the Law School from Harvard University, where he was the Manley Hudson Professor of Law and also held the Jean Monnet Chair. In addition to his scholarly work, Weiler serves as an international arbitrator in the framework of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is a board member of numerous academic institutions and learned journals and was appointed most recently to the Council of the Association for Hebraic Studies. His latest book is titled Un’Europa Cristiana (Alba: Palermo; 2003).

Dean Revesz thanked Daniel Straus and his family for their extraordinary support of the Law School. Straus then introduced Weiler, who delivered an hour-long lecture titled “God’s Serpent: On Culpability, Responsibility, and Autonomy in the Story of Eve and Adam” to more than 150 guests of the Law School and the Straus and Weiler families.

Weiler’s speech was, by his own admission, only tangentially related to his legal studies. At the end of his speech, he explained that the motivation for his biblical studies was his own personal battle for a meaningful academic life, and that as a teacher and educator he decided to give this “particular exegesis.” After describing his approach to the study of the Bible and the relationship between Genesis I and II, he moved on to Genesis III and reviewed the description of the fall of Adam and Eve and questioned the appropriateness of their punishment.

“They lack the knowledge of good and bad which, in all our legal and moral systems, is a condition for culpable behavior,” Weiler said. “If they could not tell the difference between good and bad, why such fierce, uncompromising, and eternal punishment for their transgression? Where was their mens rea?”

Weiler argued that the purpose of God’s making Adam and Eve in his image was not actually fulfilled until Eve engaged the Serpent (her inner self) and chose to eat the apple and gain wisdom. This act, then, was not a “fall,” but a realization of God’s will.

“On this reading, it is only upon and through transgression, when God in Genesis III:22 says, ‘Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,’ that potentiality becomes reality and creation of man in the image of God is realized,” Weiler said.

Despite its label as the “transgression” or “fall” that prompts God to expel Adam and Eve from the Garden, it is only then that they have truly become human. Weiler contended that the autonomy that comes from the knowledge from the fruit, the ability to know good and evil, is what allows man to truly be in God’s image.

Following the lecture, the dean, colleagues, family members, and friends of the Straus and Weiler families enjoyed a dinner honoring the Straus family. The dinner was a true family affair. Revesz, Professor Vicki Been (’83), Joseph and Ruth Weiler, and Daniel and Joyce Straus were joined by their children and the Straus extended family. The evening was graced by the presence of Daniel’s mother, Gwendolyn Straus, who, sadly, later passed away in the spring of 2003.

At the Law School, Nelkin taught courses on Law and Science and Law, New Technologies, and Risk. A number of these offerings were co-taught with other faculty, including Professors Rochelle Dreyfuss and Richard Stewart and Global Visiting Professor Upendra Baxi of India. The courses dealt with controversies over the social and legal implications of the revolution in microbiology and biotechnology, including themes of privacy and property; risk, regulation, and human rights; informed consent and conflict of interest; and the policy implications of different assumptions regarding genetic determinism. She was admired by students and colleagues for her wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, her interest in and deep respect for facts, her irreverent attitude toward established pieties, and her insistence of the importance of public values and attitudes in science and technology policy. She was an inspiration to many students with interests in the intersections among science, law, and public policy.

Deeply committed to interdisciplinary research, Nelkin was concerned about the subversion or misuse of science for political or profit-making ends. She was worried about the civil liberties implications of assembling DNA databases for crime-fighting, and was skeptical of efforts to link behavior, especially criminal behavior, to heredity. She was also concerned about loss of independence of scientific researchers and the infiltration of corporate influences and commercial motives in university-based science. Nelkin also opposed technological fixes for what she regarded as fundamentally value or social problems. At the time of her death, Nelkin was closely involved in a major research project with Professor Stewart and Global Law Professor Philippe Sands on international regulatory conflicts over genetically modified (GMO) foods and crops. Her elements of the project dealt with issues regarding public attitudes towards GMO technologies, participation in regulatory decision- making, and public trust in science and government. She was emphatic that controversies over technological risks and their regulation could not be resolved by science, and that assessment and regulatory management of risks must explicitly take into account public values and perceptions. Stewart and Sands will carry on the project in her memory.

As part of her effort to “understand the dynamics of behavior with respect to genetic ideas,” Nelkin recently collaborated with an artist, Suzanne Anker, in a project on the use of DNA images and themes by artists. They assembled an exhibit of DNA art held at the New York Academy of Sciences this past spring. Their book, The Molecular Gaze, will be published this fall. Nelkin completed her edits on the page proofs days before her death. Her fortitude and commitment to the scholarly enterprise were never more evident than in her final days.

Nelkin was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, and received her bachelor’s degree in 1954 from Cornell, where she taught for nearly 20 years before coming to NYU School of Law in 1990. Although she never earned an advanced degree, she achieved the highest levels of distinction and recognition, including memberships and directorship in a wide variety of scientific and scholarly academies and learned societies and the receipt of many grants and awards. The Society for the Social Study of Science awarded her the Bernal Prize in recognition of her founding role in establishing the field of the social study of science and her lifetime contribution to it. She served on numerous scholarly editorial boards and on many governmental and non-governmental advisory boards addressing questions of science, medicine, and public policy.

Nelkin is survived by her husband of 50 years, Mark Nelkin, emeritus professor of applied physics at Cornell; a daughter and granddaughter; and a sister. A memorial service was held September 10 at the Law School.