Justine W. Polier

Justine Polier ( Wise; April 12, 1903 – July 31, 1987) was an American lawyer, the first woman Justice in New York. An outspoken activist and judge who served for 38 years on the Family Court bench.

Background

Justine Wise was born April 12, 1903, in Portland, Oregon, to Rabbi Stephen Wise and Louise Waterman Wise. Her father was a prominent rabbi who helped found the American Jewish Congress (1918) and the NAACP (1909). He was also a leading advocate of a Jewish state and a pro-labor activist. Her mother was an artist and social worker who founded the Free Synagogue Adoption Committee in 1916 in New York. In 1925, she enrolled in Yale Law School, where she eventually became editor of the Yale Law Journal. She commuted to support the 1926 Passaic Strike.

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. She, along with Justice Jane Bolin, also fought racial discrimination by religious groups by helping to found a special school for black boys in New York. thumb She died on July 31, 1987, aged 84, in New York City. During her time as President of the Board of Louise Wise Services, which her mother founded, Polier allowed the secret separation and study of identical twins, and other practices now considered unethical, and was featured in the documentary Three Identical Strangers and the memoir Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited.