Milton R. Konvitz

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Milton Ridvas Konvitz (born March 12, 1908 in Safed , † September 5, 2003 in Monmouth , New Jersey ) was an American legal scholar .

Life

Konvitz came from a religiously influenced Jewish family, his father and his maternal grandfather were rabbis . He spent the first years of his life in Palestine . When the First World War broke out , the father was on a business trip in the United States. He sent for his wife and five children. The family then lived in various places in the state of New Jersey.

Milton Konvitz graduated from high school in Trenton at the age of 16 . In 1926 he was naturalized. He studied at New York University , where he received his BA in 1929 and his law degree in 1930. In 1933 he received his PhD in philosophy from Cornell University . It only took him a year to get his PhD.

With no opportunity to get an academic position initially, he began his professional career as a legal advisor to the Newark and New Jersey housing authorities . He then worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . As an assistant to Thurgood Marshall , he prepared trials for the NAACP involving police brutality as well as segregation and lynching in the southern states. At the same time, he was teaching law and administration at New York University.

In 1946 Konvitz became a faculty member at Cornell University, where he stayed until his retirement in 1973. He was appointed professor at the Faculty of Law in 1956. Among his students was Ruth Bader Ginsburg , now a judge at the United States Supreme Court . During his time at Cornell, Konvitz co-founded its Department of Near Eastern Studies and a course in Jewish Studies .

Konvitz was married once and had two sons with his wife Mary. He died in 2003 at the age of 95.

Focus of his work

Konvitz was a specialist in constitutional and labor law and taught on civil and human rights issues . He was particularly valued for a two-semester cycle of lectures at Cornell entitled "American Idols," in which he introduced famous thinkers whose writings helped shape American ideas of freedom and democracy. In later years he was particularly interested in the relationship between Jewish and American legal traditions. He also edited anthologies on representatives of pragmatism and transcendentalism .

Konvitz helped shape the legal system in the African state of Liberia for three decades . In the 1950s, for example, he headed a working group of Liberian lawyers that formulated the country's constitution. He also edited a compendium of the judgments of the Liberian Supreme Court.

Konvitz published many articles and was the author or editor of a number of books on civil rights. He co-founded Midstream , Judaism, and the Journal of Law and Religion . He was also co-editor of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica .

Honors

Among other things, Konvitz received seven honorary doctorates. Cornell University honored him by naming a Chair in Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies after him in 1998. Liberia thanked him for his long service to the country with the award of the Great Ribbon of the Star of Africa , the highest honor a foreigner can receive. In 1982 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts

  • The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1946.
  • The Constitution and Civil Rights. Columbia University Press, New York 1947.
  • Civil Rights in Immigration. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1953.
  • Fundamental Liberties of a Free People. Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1947.
  • A Century of Civil Rights. Greenwood Press, Westport 1961 (with Theodore Leskes).
  • Expanding liberties. Freedom's Gains in Postwar America. Viking Press, New York 1966.
  • Judaism and the American Idea. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1978, ISBN 0-8014-1181-5 .
  • Torah and Constitution. Essays in American Jewish Thought. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 1998, ISBN 0-8156-2755-6 .
  • Nine American Jewish Thinkers. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2000, ISBN 0-7658-0028-4 .
  • Fundamental Rights. History of a Constitutional Doctrine. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2001, ISBN 0-7658-0041-1 .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Konvitz, Milton R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Konvitz, Milton Ridvas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Safed
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 2003
Place of death Monmouth, New Jersey