Norman Dorsen, Tenacious Civil Rights Advocate, Dies at 86.
'Norman Dorsen, a passionate human rights advocate who led the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years and was involved in some of the biggest civil liberties cases of the second half of the 20th century, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
Mr. Dorsen’s career-long focus on civil liberties was informed by his involvement in the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954, and he went on to argue Supreme Court cases that established juveniles’ rights to due process and that acknowledged the rights of children born out of wedlock, as well as early arguments before the court on abortion and gay rights.
He was also a key figure at New York University School of Law, where he joined the faculty and became the director of the civil liberties program in 1961. Partly through Mr. Dorsen’s influence, the school gained a reputation for attracting students and faculty with an interest in public interest law.
“Perhaps no one else in the history of N.Y.U. Law shaped this place as profoundly, or affected it as deeply, as Norman,” said Trevor W. Morrison, the dean of the law school. . .
But she added that an “extraordinary identification with and feeling of solidarity with the underdog” had also guided him.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/us/norman-dorsen-obituary-aclu.html?