Justine Wise Polier was the first woman Justice in New York. An outspoken activist and a "fighting judge," for 38 years she used her position on the Family Court bench to fight for the rights of the poor and disempowered.
Preferring social legislation to practicing law, Polier worked as the first woman referee and in 1934 Assistant Corporate Council for the Workman's Compensation Division. In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia made her a judge on the Domestic Relations Court: at age 32, she became the first woman judge in New York State. In her time serving as judge, Polier was deeply involved in combating de facto segregation in the New York school system and institutional racism elsewhere in the public sector. During what she called her "second day," Polier worked to broaden services to troubled children and their families with organizations like the Citizens' Committee for Children, the Field Foundation, and the adoption agency founded by her mother in 1916 and renamed "Louise Wise Services" by Polier, who served as president of its board of directors beginning in 1946, and the Wiltwyck School.
Personal and death
Polier's first husband was Leon Arthur Tulin, a professor of criminal law at Yale. He died of leukemia in 1932. Also in 1932, at the International Juridical Association, she met Shad Polier, whom she married in 1937. She was deeply moved by the Jewish prophetic tradition of commitment to justice. Polier's concern for Jewish rights meant that, like her parents, she was a committed Zionist. She served as vice-president of the American Jewish Congress, and president of its women's division. In addition she believed that pluralism and the separation of church and state were "the essence of Americanism." Polier's absolute commitment to justice made her a powerful advocate for poor women and children throughout her life. In the 1920s she fought for the Passaic women laborers, in the 1980s she condemned the federal ban on funding for poor women's medically necessary abortions, and she spent her retirement monitoring national juvenile detention policies for the Children's Defense Fund. Polier's ideal of justice was infused with empathy. At the same time, she insisted compassion was worthless unless accompanied by a commitment to justice. Although she had never planned to serve more than a few years in the Family Court, Polier stayed for almost four decades. She died on July 31, 1987, in New York City.
Legacy
The Citizens' Committee for Children has held a biannual "Justine Wise Polier Symposium" as early as 2012.
