THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Sylvia Law

“I picked Antioch College because it was academically excellent and it was a hotbed of free love and Communism.”

Attorney, author, educator. One of the nation’s leading scholars in health law, gender justice, poverty and constitutional law. Played a major role in dozens of civil rights cases before the US Supreme Court and in lower state and federal courts; has testified before Congress and state legislatures. Helped persuade the ACLU to create a Reproductive Freedom Project, 1976. Helped create the Center for Reproductive Rights, 1992. Served on the board of NOW LDEF, 1977-1981. Chair of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, 1985-1989. First lawyer in the U.S. selected as a MacArthur Fellow, 1983. Co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Program and chair of the Rose Sheinberg Lecture program at NYU School of Law. Active in the Society of American Law Teachers; president, 1988-1990. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2004. B.A., Antioch College, 1964. J.D., New York University School of Law, 1968.

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, October 2022