Boudin, Leonard B. (1912-1989)
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Description
Boudin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated from City College of New York in 1933 and from St. John’s Law School in 1935. He practiced labor law with his uncle’s firm, Boudin, Cohen and Glickstine, starting in 1936. In 1947 he established his own firm with Victor Rabinowitz, an association that lasted until Boudin’s death. The McCarthy era and the Cold War shaped his largely appellate practice through the mid-1960s. After that, Boudin, often acting as a trial attorney, resisted and challenged governmental incursions into individual liberties. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 could have ended Boudin’s practice, as it led unions to purge themselves of members and attorneys tainted by left-wing affiliations. Not only had Boudin’s representation of left-wing unions had made him suspect, but in 1950 a federal court appointed him counsel to the alleged spy Judith Coplon. Ironically, the McCarthy era provided a new set of clients. Boudin represented victims of the “witch hunt” before congressional and state legislative committees and in administrative hearings and the courts. In 1952, a year after its founding, he began his life-long tenure as general counsel to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. During this period Boudin successfully litigated several issues that greatly changed civil liberties in the United States. He argued a series of cases that culminated in Kent v. Dulles (1958), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the government could not deny passports to individuals on the basis of their political beliefs. In 1965 he argued Lamont v. Postmaster General, which held unconstitutional a statute requiring individuals affirmatively to request delivery of “radical” political literature. Boudin briefed and argued 19 cases before the Court.
Source Publication
The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law
Source Editors/Authors
Roger K. Newman
Publication Date
2009
Recommended Citation
Kornhauser, Lewis A., "Boudin, Leonard B. (1912-1989)" (2009). Faculty Chapters. 1030.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1030
