LSC Vice Chair Martha Minow

LSC Vice Chair
Martha Minow

Martha Minow was nominated to serve on the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation by President Barack Obama on August 6, 2009, and her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2010. She was elected Vice Chair of the LSC Board by her fellow Board members on April 7, 2010.

She is Dean of Harvard Law School and the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law. She has also served as the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Law and the acting director of what is now Harvard's Safra Foundation Center on Ethics.

Dean Minow's research focuses on legal issues facing children, women, members of racial, religious, and ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities. Her books address civil procedure, family law, social services, and societies emerging from violent conflicts. She began her legal career as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Her honors include: the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse, awarded by the College Historical Society of Trinity College, Dublin, in recognition of efforts to promote discourse and intellectualism on a world stage; the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, awarded by the Harvard Law School graduating class of 2005; the Holocaust Center Award, 2006; and Honorary Doctorates from Northwestern University (Law), the Jewish Theological Seminary (Law), Dominican University (Humane Letters), Hebrew College (Humane Letters), McGill University (Law), the University of Toronto (Law), and Wheelock College (Education).

Dean Minow serves on the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Covenant Foundation, and other nonprofit organizations. She previously chaired the board of directors for the Revson Foundation (New York) and the Scholar’s Board of Facing History and Ourselves.  She has served on the boards of the American Bar Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the International Independent Commission on Kosovo. and the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center.

She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan, an Ed.M. from Harvard, and a J.D. from Yale University.