Honoree Profile: Nancy S. Erickson

Nancy S. Erickson, a feminist legal educator, became a member of New York City NOW in 1969 and its treasurer in 1970. In 1973 she graduated from Brooklyn Law School, where she was cofounder of the first women law students association.

In 1971 she wrote an article for the Brooklyn Law Review on Phillips v Martin Marietta which, in December 1970, had been the first Supreme Court case concerning sex discrimination brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Erickson was a volunteer attorney at the Women's Law Center from1973 to 1975,where she wrote fact sheets on legal issues such as women's names, family law, and credit, and A Woman's Guide to Marriage and Divorce in New York (1974).

As a law firm associate in 1973-74, Erickson provided free legal assistance to New York Women Against Rape and other non-profit women's organizations. As a NYC law professor from 1975 to 1980, she cofounded Metropolitan Women Law Teachers Association; chaired (1976-1977) the Association of American Law School's section on Women in Legal Education; cofounded the Society for the Study of Women in Legal History, and was one of the first to teach Women and the Law at New York Law School and at Cornell Law School (1975-1980).

She was a volunteer attorney during the 1970s for ACLU,writing briefs in sex discrimination cases, including Ludtke v Kuhn, in which women reporters sued to be able to interview male athletes after baseball games.

Erickson holds an LL.M from Yale Law School and a Master's degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her thesis on how the most commonly used personality test often misdiagnoses battered women was published in an ABA journal. She has written books and articles on family law, including domestic violence, child support, custody, marital property, attorneys for children, custody evaluations, and adoption.

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