Judge Nancy Gertner
Legal Career Devoted to Women, Minorities, and the Poor
 In 1975, when Judge Nancy Gertner '67 began her career as a criminal defense lawyer, she was one of very few women in the field. Her first major case captured national headlines: she defended Susan Saxe, one of three radical anti-war activists who had robbed a bank five years before, resulting in the murder of a Boston police officer. The press skewered Saxe, who had been on the run. The sensational case resulted in a mistrial and a plea to lesser charges. Gertner would go on to build a reputation as an advocate in important cases affecting women, minorities, and the poor.
Over the next two decades, Gertner continued to make headlines in controversial criminal and civil rights cases. With her husband, John Reinstein, she litigated every abortion case in Massachusetts. Their efforts culminated in Moe v. Secretary of Administration and Finance, which situated the right to choose under the Massachusetts constitution. As a result, if Roe v. Wade is overruled, it will not affect Massachusetts abortion law.
Gertner also challenged Medicaid limitations on funding for abortions, represented the Concerned Black Educators in the Boston school desegregation case, and took on one of the first sexual discrimination class actions to be brought against an academic institution. "Representing women who sued universities became a specialty of mine," Gertner says, who brought seven major universities to court in female faculty tenure cases and consulted on many more.
During those years, Gertner never thought that she would be picked for the federal bench, believing that her advocacy in civil rights and other controversial cases would eliminate her from consideration.
"I was the reverse of those who keep their heads down for years in order to preserve their chances on the bench," she said.
Her work on behalf of women, minorities, and the poor caught the attention of her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, whom she had known, along with Hillary Clinton, at Yale. Gertner and Mrs. Clinton had been close and the two stayed in touch over the years.
In 1994, Clinton nominated Gertner for the U.S. Federal Court, District of Massachusetts. She had a powerful patron in the confirmation process -- U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a lifelong supporter of civil rights.
Gertner credits Professor Phoebe Morrison, who taught constitutional law at Barnard, for sparking her interest in law.
"She gave me the space to envision being a grand constitutional lawyer," Gertner says. "It is direct and clear as that. I still have my notes from her class." Morrison challenged her students, assigning original documents, federal papers, and cases. As a professor--Gertner is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School--Gertner recognizes that "it was a lot to ask of undergraduates, to read and discuss cases. But I felt every corpuscle in my body was alive in her class."
Honored in the spring of 2002 by the American Bar Association as a "Human Rights Hero," Gertner was an activist even as a college student; she was president of the Undergraduate Association at Barnard, and joined marches and protests against the Vietnam War.
Gertner is currently presiding over a death-penalty case that involves many of the issues that have shaped her career: the racial composition of juries, the practice of disqualifying jurors who do not support the death penalty, and the likelihood that urban crimes will result in death-penalty sentences. Her rulings have far-reaching ramifications; last January, the Supreme Court affirmed Gertner's decision that it is unconstitutional to mandate higher sentences for defendants based on facts that were never put to a jury.
Gertner recently wrote a memoir titled Lawyer with the Red Dress On (under editorial consideration by a publisher), that focuses on what she calls her "improbable career": building a high-profile, controversial legal career, which culminated in her appointment as a federal judge, while she devoted time to academia. In addition to her work at Yale, Gertner has taught at Harvard, Boston College, the University of Arizona, and Boston University. "There was always this dialectic between my academic ambitions and my practice life," recalls Gertner.
She has managed to maintain another delicate balance: that between work and family. "Menopause and birth were neck and neck," Gertner says of her pregnancies at ages 39 and 41. "I feel privileged that I could have children, but I had so much to do before I could even envision myself ready." Gertner and her husband, currently the legal director of the Massachusetts ACLU, have three children, including one from Reinstein's previous marriage.
—Ilana Stanger-Ross
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