cover all the bases,” she explains. “But as we went through college and grad school we began to concentrate on what was important to us. It’s like what columnist Anna Quindlen wrote about—she arrived at Barnard College [Gertner’s alma mater too] in a pressed pleated skirt and left in jeans.” After Barnard, she earned an M.A.
and a J.D. from Yale, where, along with friends like Hilary Rodham Clinton, she was completely swept up in the politics of the time. “I’d been think- ing about a career in academia, but no more. Who wanted to sit in the library? I protested against the [Vietnam] war and got involved in women’s rights. I would have gone down south to protest [inequality] several years earlier, but I was slightly too young and my parents wouldn’t let me.” Now that Gertner is in academia,
18
she’s noticed a troubling trend among her students—a shift away from the pursuit of social justice. “T is pursuit of fi nancial stability had been going on before the 2008 crash, but it’s much worse now,” she adds. “In my day there was a sense that you had a chance to experiment in the law and to try things, to match your sense of social justice with your job. I didn’t come from wealth at all but I never felt that it was critical for me to imme- diately start making money. I wanted to do what I thought was interesting and meaningful.” Gertner arrived on the heavily
male-dominated legal scene in the mid- 70s, already dressed in her soon-to-be signature red. (“I fi gured if I had to wear a suit everyday it might as well be my favorite color.”) As a brilliant young attorney, she drew national attention for eff ectively represent- ing anti-war activist Susan Saxe in a high-profi le murder trial. T roughout Gertner’s 20-year career practicing criminal defense and civil rights, fi rst at Silverglate & Gertner and later at Dwyer, Collora & Gertner, she focused on issues involving women, including abortion rights, workplace discrimina- tion, and rape and murder cases.
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MARCH/APRIL 2013
It’s particularly interesting when you teach in the area of your practice or what you wrote about as a judge—it enables you to take a step back and say here’s where the law is going and get the big picture.
Harvey Silverglate, her partner
for much of the 1970s and ‘80s, says Gertner has a natural ability for dominating prosecutors, and com- municating and connecting with jurors. “She is tough, inventive, fear- less, and has impeccable judgment,” he says. “I should also point out that early in her life she was a consum- mate actor in school plays; that talent has carried over.” Today she shares her expertise in
the classroom as a fulltime professor teaching criminal law, criminal proce- dure, forensic science, and sentencing. “It’s particularly interesting when you teach in the area of your practice or what you wrote about as a judge—it enables you to take a step back and say ‘here’s where the law is going’ and get the big picture. And students are wonderful about asking questions that you might not have thought about.” Looking back, Gertner says, she can
grasp some aspects she sees as trends that she may not have seen while she was on the bench. “When I was a judge, I wasn’t fully aware just how badly employment discrimination cases were treated in courts. I didn’t see the
pattern until I left the bench.” So long as she is coming from
a place of acting in the pursuit of truth and justice, Gertner is fi ne with ruffl ing a few feathers. During her years as a federal judge, she was often invited to events to show the strides women had made in the legal world. But she never played along. “Instead, I’d say ‘Isn’t it awful?’ Even though the profession is half comprised of women, there are only three women justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.” In addition to teaching, she does some litigation consulting, arbitration, and mediation, but is busy writing books, articles, op-eds, and amicus briefs. “Having been a litigator and a judge, I have the perspective that very few others have had.” “When I retired from the bench I
had to say I was retired, but that was just a technical issue,” says Gertner. “Retirement is not a concept that I understand. T ere’s still so much I want to do.” D&B
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
MCCA.COM
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