Louis H. Pollak papers

Louis Heilprin Pollak, a United States District Court judge and former dean of the Yale Law School and University of Pennyslvania Law School, was born on December 7, 1922, in New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1943, and after serving in the United States Army, received his law degree from Yale. After graduating from law school, Pollak worked as a clerk for Justice Wiley B. Rutledge of the United States Supreme Court from 1948 to 1949, and thereafter accepted a position at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison (known as of 2013 as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison). It was during his tenure at this firm that Pollak was recruited by Thurgood Marshall to serve as a volunteer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which afforded him the opportunity to contribute significantly to several landmark civil rights cases.

Pollak was a member of the legal team that represented the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 United States Supreme Court case that overturned legal segregation in American public schools. In 1965, he argued before the Supreme Court in the Abernathy v. Alabama case, which resulted in the reversal of criminal convictions of Freedom Riders who had campaigned to desegregate buses and bus stations in the South. Pollak also argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in McLaughlin v. Florida, in which the court unanimously repealed a law banning the cohabitation of people of different races.

Pollak joined the Yale Law School faculty in 1955 and was appointed dean in 1965, a position he held until 1970. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and was named dean the following year. United States President Jimmy Carter appointed Pollak to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1978. During his 36-year tenure as a judge, Pollak was known as a staunch advocate of defendents' rights. In 1992, Pollak became a senior judge in semi-retirement, and in addition to his district court duties, sat by designation regularly with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and also often with the Ninth Circuit. Louis H. Pollak died on May 8, 2012, and at the time of his death, was survived by his wife, Katherine Weiss Pollak, five daughters, and seven grandchildren.