Professor Meltsner was first assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund in the 1960s and served as dean of the law school from 1979
until 1984. His memoir, The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer, was
published in 2006 (University of Virginia Press). Among his other writings are: Cruel and Unusual:
The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment; Public Interest Advocacy;
Reflections on Clinical Legal Education; and Short Takes, a novel.
In 1977, Professor Meltsner, who is also a licensed marriage and
family therapist, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has served as
a consultant to the US Department of Justice, the Ford Foundation and
the Legal Action Center of the City of New York and has lectured in
Canada, Egypt, Germany, India,the Netherlands and South Africa. In 2000,
he was named a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and conducted
research on German constitutional law. Professor Meltsner is returning
to the School of Law after five years as a visiting professor and
director of the First-Year Lawyering Program at Harvard Law School.
[ Selected Publications: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law |Jurisprudence |Legal Education ]
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