Justine Polier ( Wise; April 12, 1903 – July 31, 1987) was an American lawyer, the first woman Justice in

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. An outspoken activist and judge who served for 38 years on the Family Court bench.

Background

Justine Wise was born April 12, 1903, in

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, to Rabbi Stephen Wise and Louise Waterman Wise. Her father was a prominent rabbi who helped found the

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(1918) and the

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(1909). He was also a leading advocate of a Jewish state and a pro-labor activist. Her mother was an artist and

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who founded the Free Synagogue Adoption Committee in 1916 in New York. As a young woman, she studied labor relations and advocated for workers’ rights, while also working at Elizabeth Peabody Settlement house and a textile mill. She attended Horace Mann High School,

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, and

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.Ellen Herman
"Justine Wise Polier (1903-1987)"
Adoption History Project, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon website In 1925, she enrolled in

Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...

, where she eventually became editor of the ''Yale Law Journal''. She commuted to support the 1926 Passaic Strike.

Career

Polier began volunteering with the

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(IJA) in 1933 alongside her future husband Shad Polier. Preferring social legislation to practicing law, Polier worked as the first woman referee and in 1934 Assistant Corporate Council for the

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Division. In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia made Polier a judge on the Domestic Relations Court. At age 32, she became the first woman judge in New York State. In her time serving as judge, Polier was deeply involved in combating de facto

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in the New York school system and institutional racism elsewhere in the public sector. She, along with Justice Jane Bolin, also fought racial discrimination by religious groups by helping to found a special school for black boys in New York. Additionally, she pushed for a psychological approach in the fight for elimination of race matching in probation. In 1936, Polier decided
In re Vardinakis
', a case which she described "as 'a first baptism by religious fire.'" The decision involved a compromise between a divorcing Catholic mother and Muslim father as to the religious training of their children, drawing criticism from Catholic periodicals while at the same time shaping Jewish involvement in the future of New York's "foundling" rotation system. Polier was also an advocate for Jewish children attempting to escape from Nazi Germany, collaborating with

Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( ; October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D ...

to, albeit unsuccessfully, urge Congress to allow Jewish children to circumvent strict immigration quotas. She also fought against race discrimination, serving as Vice-Chairman of the Subcommittee on Bill of Rights and General Welfare, where she pushed for anti-discrimination laws in the context of employment and child welfare in education. In 1942, she and Justice Jane Bolin helped pass a "Race Discrimination Amendment" penned by her husband in the New York City's appropriations budget. Polier also supported the Ives-Quinn Act, a state level anti-discrimination law which made New York the first state with a dedicated agency for employment discrimination complaints in 1945. During what she called her "second day," Polier worked to broaden services to troubled children and their families with organizations like the Citizens' Committee for Children, the Field Foundation, and the adoption agency founded by her mother in 1916 and renamed "Louise Wise Services" by Polier, who served as president of its board of directors beginning in 1946, and the Wiltwyck School. She also served on the board of directors for the Northside Center for Child Development, founded by

Mamie Clark Mamie Phipps Clark (October 18, 1917 – August 11, 1983) was a social psychologist who, along with her husband Kenneth Clark, focused on the development of self-consciousness in black preschool children. Clark was born and raised in Hot Springs, ...

Personal and death

Polier's first husband was Leon Arthur Tulin, a professor of criminal law at Yale. He died of

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in 1932. In 1933, at the

International Juridical Association The International Juridical Association (IJA; 1931–1942) was an association of socially minded American lawyers, established by Carol Weiss King and considered by the U.S. federal government (in the form of the U.S. House Un-American Activities ...

, she met Shad Polier, whom she married in 1937. She was deeply moved by the Jewish prophetic tradition of commitment to justice. Polier's concern for Jewish rights meant that, like her parents, she was a committed Zionist. She served as vice-president of the American Jewish Congress, and president of its women's division. In addition, she believed that pluralism and the separation of church and state were "the essence of Americanism." Polier was an advocate for poor women and children throughout her life. In the 1920s she fought for the Passaic women laborers, in the 1980s she condemned the federal ban on funding for poor women's medically necessary abortions, and she spent her retirement monitoring national juvenile detention policies for the

Children's Defense Fund The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on child advocacy and research. It was founded in 1973 by Marian Wright Edelman. History The CDF was founded in 1973, ci ...

. Polier's ideal of justice was infused with empathy. At the same time, she insisted compassion was worthless unless accompanied by a commitment to justice. Although she had never planned to serve more than a few years in the Family Court, Polier stayed for almost four decades. She died on July 31, 1987, aged 84, in New York City.

Legacy

The Citizens' Committee for Children has held a biannual "Justine Wise Polier Symposium" as early as 2012.

References

External sources

* * * Jewish Women's Archive, "JWA - Justine Wise - Introduction,

(March 20, 2008).
Jewish Women's Archive
Justine Wise Polier
Women of Valor exhibit on Justine Wise Polier
at th
Jewish Women's Archive

Papers, 1892-1990.Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Guide to the Justine Wise Polier and Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence Collection
at the

American Jewish Historical Society The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) was founded in 1892 with the mission to foster awareness and appreciation of American Jewish history and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation an ...