Martha Minow

Martha Louise Minow (born December 6, 1954) is the Morgan and Helen Chu Professor of Law and the Dean of Harvard Law School. She has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981. Minow was one of the candidates mentioned to replace U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens upon his retirement. President Obama ended up nominating then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Minow's predecessor as dean of Harvard Law School.

Biography

Minow is the daughter of former Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow, and his wife, Josephine (Baskin) Minow. After graduating from New Trier Township High School in 1972 and completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan in 1975, Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard (1976) and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School (1979), where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

After graduating from law school, Minow clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court.

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School (also known as Harvard Law or HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The law school is generally considered one of the most prestigious in the world.

HLS has a considerably bigger class size than most law schools – each class in the three-year J.D. program has approximately 560 students, the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States. With a current enrollment of 1,990, HLS has about as many students as its three closest-ranked peer institutions (first-ranked Yale, second-ranked Stanford, and fourth-ranked Chicago) combined. The first-year (1L) class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students, who take most first-year classes together. Harvard's uniquely large class size and its prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary, government, and the business world.

Martha

Martha of Bethany (Aramaic: מַרְתָּא Martâ) is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. She was witness to Jesus' resurrection of her brother, Lazarus.

Etymology of the name

The name Martha is a Latin transliteration of the Koine Greek Μάρθα, itself a translation of the Aramaic מַרְתָּא Martâ, "The mistress" or "the lady", from מרה "mistress", feminine of מר "master". The Aramaic form occurs in a Nabatean inscription found at Puteoli, and now in the Naples Museum; it is dated AD. 5 (Corpus Inscr. Semit., 158); also in a Palmyrene inscription, where the Greek translation has the form Marthein.

Biblical references

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the home of two sisters named Mary and Martha. The two sisters are contrasted: Martha was "cumbered about many things" while Jesus was their guest, while Mary had chosen "the better part", that of listening to the master's discourse. The name of their village is not recorded, nor any mention of whether Jesus was near Jerusalem:

Law school

A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction.

Law degrees

Brazil

In Brazil, law is studied as an undergraduate program. Students who succesfully complete such programs are awarded a Bachelor of Law and are allowed to take the bar examination, which is held twice a year on a nation-wide basis. Candidates who pass the examination are then allowed to work as attorneys.

Canada

The oldest civil law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1848 at McGill University in Montreal, and the oldest common law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1883 at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The typical law degree required to practice law in Canada is now the Juris Doctor, which requires previous university coursework and is similar to the first law degree in the United States. There is some scholarly content in the coursework (such as an academic research paper required in most schools). The programs consist of three years, and have similar content in their mandatory first year courses. Beyond first year and the minimum requirements for graduation, course selection is elective with various concentrations such as business law, international law, natural resources law, criminal law, Aboriginal law, etc. Some schools, however, have not switched from LL.B. to the J.D. – one notable university that still awards the LL.B is McGill University.

Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan (pronounced /ˈkeɪɡən/; born April 28, 1960) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Kagan is the Court's 112th justice and fourth female justice.

Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After attending Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she completed federal Court of Appeals and Supreme Court clerkships. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as policy adviser, under President Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean.

President Barack Obama appointed her Solicitor General on January 26, 2009. On May 10, 2010, Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, and she resigned her position as Solicitor General on May 17, 2010. After Senate confirmation, Kagan was sworn in on August 7, 2010, by Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Kagan's formal investiture ceremony before a special sitting of the United States Supreme Court took place on October 1, 2010.