Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:00:59.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tilting at Windmills? Judge Justine Wise Polier and a History of Justice and Education in New York City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jennifer de Forest
Jennifer de Forest*
Affiliation:
Judge Justine Wise Polier, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Judge Justine Wise Polier

In 1935 Justine Wise Polier (1903–87), an intense young labor lawyer serving on New York City's Committee on Unemployment Relief, was pressuring Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to expand the city's welfare benefits. Thinking he would mollify her, La Guardia promoted Polier to the bench of the city's children's court, making her the first woman to rise above the position of magistrate in New York State.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 68 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In 1920 there were 1,738 women lawyers in the United States, 1.4% of the field. See the tables in the appendix in Virginia Drachman, Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

2 The court lasted from 1924 to 1962. For a detailed legislative history of the children's court see Sobie, Merril, The Creation of Juvenile Justice: A History of New York's Children's Laws (Albany, NY: The New York Bar Foundation, 1987).Google Scholar

3 For an introduction to the common law doctrine parens patriae see Ramsey, Sarah and Abrams, Douglas, Children and the Law (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2001).Google Scholar

4 Historian Lawrence Cremin described his theory of a comprehensive history of education in Public Education (New York: Basic Books, 1976). He also gives a pithy overview of it in the preface to American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1980 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). Ironically, Cremin devotes less than one page of this vast tome to the role of the children's courts in the education of urban youth. See 308–309.Google Scholar

5 Tanenhous, David, Juvenile Justice in the Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), xxvii.Google Scholar

6 Sobie, , The Creation of Juvenile Justice, 132.Google Scholar

7 Platt, Anthony, The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Mennel, Robert M., Thorns and Thistles: Juvenile Delinquents in the United States, 1825–1940 (Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England), 1973 and Steven Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of “Progressive” Juvenile Justice, 1825–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977).Google Scholar

9 Robertson, Stephen, Crimes against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).Google Scholar

10 Tiffin, Susan, In Whose Best Interest? (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).Google Scholar

11 See Larsen, Charles, The Good Fight: The Life and Times of Ben B. Lindsey (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), and Barnard, Harry, The Forging of an American Jew: The Life and Times of Judge Julian W. Mack (New York: Herzl Press, 1974).Google Scholar

12 Polier, Justine, Juvenile Justice in Double Jeopardy (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986), 35.Google Scholar

13 Other judges of the New York Children's Court who deserve historical investigation include Poller's colleagues Judge Herbert Delaney and Judge Jane Bolin, both among the nation's first black justices.Google Scholar

14 For an excellent overview of such cases see Mezey, Susan Gluck, Children in Court: Public Policymaking and the Federal Court System (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996).Google Scholar

15 This article relies on the following archival collections: Justine Wise Polier Papers, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University. Hereafter JWP. Viola Bernard Papers, Archives and Special Collections, A.C. Long Health Science Library, Columbia University. Hereafter VB. Marion Kenworthy Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University. Hereafter MK. Polier, Bernard, and Kenworthy were longtime friends and frequent collaborators.Google Scholar

16 Polier, Justine, View From the Bench (New York: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1964).Google Scholar

17 For a pithy history of school governance and decentralization see David Tyack's “School Governance in the United States: Historical Puzzles and Anomalies,” in Decentralization and School Improvement, eds. Hannaway, Jane and Carnoy, Martin (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1993), 1–32. For a detailed account of events that led up to the movement for community control in New York City see Ravitch, Diane, The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

18 Podair, Jerald, The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

19 Perlstein, Daniel, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 7–8.Google Scholar

20 Polier's father was Rabbi Stephen Wise, founder of the US Free Synagogue. Her mother was Louise Wise, founder of the New York City's first non-sectarian adoption agency, Louise Wise Services.Google Scholar

21 Polier, Justine, Columbia Oral History, nd, interviewer unknown, JWP, Box 1, Folder “OH”, 55.Google Scholar

22 Justine Polier Oral History, conducted by Gellhorn, Kitty, May 21, 1980, the Columbia Oral History Project, Butler Library, Columbia University, 84.Google Scholar

23 Campbell, Barbara, “A Battling Judge Retires to Aid Minority Children,” The New York Times, 3 February 1973, 63.Google Scholar

24 Drachman, , Sisters in Law, 2.Google Scholar

25 Polier Oral History, Gellhorn, May 21,105.Google Scholar

26 Justine Polier Oral History, conducted by Gellhorn, Kitty, November 24, 1980, the Columbia Oral History Project, Butler Library, Columbia University, 142.Google Scholar

27 Notes for Shad Polier's obituary can be found in Field Foundation Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Box 4X101.Google Scholar

28 See Robyn Muncy's introduction to her Creating a Female Dominion of American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

29 For an introduction to Marion Kenworthy's work see Lee, Porter and Kenworthy, Marion, Mental Hygiene and Social Work (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1931).Google Scholar

30 Hill, John Warren, “Conservation: The Child and the Family in Court,” (New York: The Tenny Press, 1939), 60.Google Scholar

31 Kenworthy, Marion, “Psychiatry and Social Work in Perspective,” November 3, 1973. MK, Box 1.Google Scholar

32 Kenworthy, Marion, “Psychiatry and Social Work in Perspective.”Google Scholar

33 See Poller's case notes in JWP, Box 8, Folder 83.Google Scholar

34 See JWP, Box 8, Folder 83.Google Scholar

35 Montague, Helen to Hill, John Warren, Memo on the Psychiatric Clinic, May 25, 1938, 3. MK, Box 28, Folder “Orgs, A-Ch.”Google Scholar

36 Polier, Justine, “The Opportunity and Responsibility of a School as Seen by a Juvenile Court Judge,” May 24, 1945. JWP, Box 45, Folder 556.Google Scholar

37 For details of efforts to weed out authoritarian teachers in New York City see de Forest, Jennifer, “The New York City Failed Teacher Selection Project, 1947–1954: Political Reality Trumps Educational Research.” Teachers College Record 108, no. 4 (2006): 726–747.Google Scholar

38 Polier, Justine, Everybody's Children, Nobody's Child: A Judge Looks at Underprivileged Children (New York: Scribner's Sons Publishers, 1941), 172.Google Scholar

39 Winsor, Dr. Max, “Memorandum on Juvenile Delinquency, The Citywide Citizens Committee on Harlem,” April 30, 1943.Google Scholar

40 Court, Domestic Relations, Children's Court Division, County of Bronx, In the Matter of Alvin Allen, 4. November 27, 1942. JWP, Box 10, Folder 103. All subsequent references to the Allen case are to this transcript.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, the handwritten notes in JWP papers Box 24, Folder 99.Google Scholar

42 See Lavine, Harold, “Social Workers Warned La Guardia When he Slashed Educational and Welfare Funds.” PM Daily III, no. 82 (9 September 1942): 3.Google Scholar

43 Polier, Justine, “We've Let the War Make Lawbreakers of Children.” PM Daily III, no. 82 (21 September 1942): 2.Google Scholar

44 Court, Domestic Relations, “Comparative Statement of Allegedly Delinquent Children Brought Before the Court, 1941, 1942, 1943,” n.d. JWP, Box 4, Folder 40.Google Scholar

45 “Delinquent Boys Held in Tombs,” 5 April 1944. Source unknown; clipping is available in JWP, Box 3, Folder 29.Google Scholar

46 For the legacy of New York City's outsourcing of child caring to private sectarian interests see Nina Bernstein's The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001).Google Scholar

47 Cobb, Bruce, “Children's Courts Needs,” memo, n.d. JWP, Box 24, Folder 296.Google Scholar

48 Viteritti, Joseph, “Tombs,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Jackson, Kenneth T. (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1991), 1190.Google Scholar

49 Minutes of Meeting of Sub-Committee on Crime and Delinquency of the City-Wide Citizen's Committee on Harlem, May 27, 1944. JWP, Box 24, Folder 295.Google Scholar

50 See Polier, , “We've Let the War Make Lawbreakers of Children.”Google Scholar

51 Polier, Justine, In Re Prieto, Domestic Relations Court, City of New York, Children's Court Division, Bronx County. 49 N.Y.S.2d 800; June 29, 1944. All subsequent references to the Prieto case are to this transcript.Google Scholar

52 McDonald, Mary Jean, The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York and the Evolution of Child Advocacy, 1945–1972 (Diss., New York University, 1993), 90.Google Scholar

53 Bernard, Viola, The Citizens Committee on Children of New York City Inc.: A New Tool for Community Planning and Action, unpublished manuscript, n.d., VB, Box 186, Folder 6.Google Scholar

54 “Children Absent from School: A Report and a Program” (New York: Citizens’ Committee on Children of New York City Inc, 1949), 81–82.Google Scholar

55 “Children Absent from School,” 82.Google Scholar

56 “Children Absent from School,” 12.Google Scholar

57 Eliot, Martha, “Introduction” to Justine Poller's “Back to What Woodshed?” Public Affairs Committee Pamphlet No. 232, 1956, 6.Google Scholar

58 Eliot, , “Introduction,” 6. For a discussion of responses to the increase in juvenile crime rates in other cities see Steven Mintz's Huck's Raft: The History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 291–93.Google Scholar

59 Polier had multiple connections to the NAACP's LDEF. She was, for example, a founding board member of the Field Foundation, a loyal hinder of the organization.Google Scholar

60 Polier, Justine, In the Matter of Shelley Myers, Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York, Children's Court Division. 14 Misc. 2d 325; 180 N.Y.S. 2d 852. All subsequent references to the Myers case are to this transcript.Google Scholar

61 “Father Is Cleared in School Boycott,” The New York Times, 20 February 1953, 20.Google Scholar

62 “Father Is Cleared in School Boycott,” 20.Google Scholar

63 For a discussion of pre-civil rights era parental activism in Harlem see, for example, “Link Old Schools to Harlem Unrest,” The New York Times, 11 April 1935, 16.Google Scholar

64 One family had enrolled their child in catholic school and so was in compliance with the compulsory education law.Google Scholar

65 The New York Times, 13 December 1958. Clipping available in JWP, Box 21, Folder 248a.Google Scholar

66 Polier, Justine, In the Matter of Charlene Skipwith and Another Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York, Children's Court Division. 14 Misc. 2d 325; 180 N.Y.S.2d 852. All subsequent references to the Skipwith case are to this transcript.Google Scholar

67 New York Teacher News, January 24, 1959, 1.Google Scholar

68 Podair, , The Strike that Changed New York, 22.Google Scholar

69 Sobie, , The Creation of Juvenile Justice, 159.Google Scholar

70 For a discussion of the implications of Gault see Watkins, John, The Juvenile Century: A Sociolegal Commentary on the American Juvenile Courts (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1998).Google Scholar

71 See for example Guarino-Ghezzi, Susan and Loughran, Edward J., Balancing Juvenile Justice (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004). See especially “The Due Process ‘Revolution': The Case of Gerald Gault,” 99–105.Google Scholar

72 Polier, , Juvenile Justice in Double Jeopardy, 12Google Scholar

73 Ibid., 11.Google Scholar

74 As of 2004, in all states except Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Mexico, and New York a juvenile judge could opt to waive jurisdiction of a case and send it to the criminal courts. See Guarino-Ghezzi, Susan and Loughran, Edward J., Balancing Juvenile Justice (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 107–109.Google Scholar

75 Streib, Victor L., Death Penalty for Juveniles (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 9.Google Scholar

76 Polier, , Juvenile Justice in Double Jeopardy, 12Google Scholar

77 See Podair's The Strike that Changed New York and Perlstein's Justice, Justice for detailed accounts the way parents rejected expert-controlled education.Google Scholar

78 See the introduction to Poller's, Juvenile Justice in Double Jeopardy. Google Scholar

79 See, for example, Barry Feld's Bad Kids: Race and the Transformation of the Juvenile Court (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

80 Polier, , Juvenile Justice in Double Jeopardy, xii.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., xiv.Google Scholar

82 Ibid.,xiv.Google Scholar

83 Data are drawn from the report “Young Adults in Jail or Prison,” Child Trends available online at www.childtrendsdatabank.org.Google Scholar