Sylvia Law Papers
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Abstract
Sylvia Law (1942) is an attorney, legal scholar, and the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry Emerita at the NYU School of Law. The Sylvia Law Papers (dated 1977-2007) consists of materials relating to Law's professional, scholarly, and teaching career. It includes documentation of court cases and legal campaigns; MacArthur fellowship information; drafts and published articles; press releases and reviews; and correspondence regarding legal causes, writing projects, speaking engagements, and academic life at the School of Law.
Biographical Note
Sylvia Law is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry Emerita. She earned her B.A. at Antioch College in 1964 and her J.D. at New York University School of Law in 1968. Law began working at the NYU School of Law in 1973 and over the course of her teaching career, she has taught constitutional law, family law, and health law. She has also participated in the Hays Program Seminar at NYU Law. In addition to teaching at NYU, Law has been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics (1969-1970), Harvard Law School (1984), CUNY Law School at Queens College (1989), Stanford Law School (1996), the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law (1999-2000), Temple University Beasley School of Law (2005), and the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law & Burns School of Medicine.
Sylvia Law specializes in health; gender and justice; poverty; and constitutional law. She has presented civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in federal and lower state courts. She has also testified before Congress and state legislatures on a variety of issues.
In 1983, Law became the first lawyer in the United States to be selected as a MacArthur Fellow, and between 1988-1990, she served as president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She is the co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Program and chair of the Rose Sheinberg Lecture program at NYU School of Law. In 2013, the Sylvia A. Law Fellowship in Economic Justice was created as part of the Hays Civil Liberties Program at NYU Law School.
Over the course of her career, Law has written several books including, Blue Cross: What Went Wrong (1973), Pain and Profit: The Politics of Malpractice (1979), and American Health Law (1990).
Arrangement
The materials in the collection are arranged in a single file listing with all material listed alphabetically by topic.
Scope and Contents
The Sylvia Law Papers (dated 1977-2007) consists of materials relating to Law's professional, scholarly, and teaching career. The collection includes materials documenting Law's role in legal cases and social movement campaigns; documents outlining her role as a professor at New York University School of Law; legal briefs and research notes; symposium and conference materials; papers related to the MacArthur Fellowship; correspondence, briefs, and research materials related to court cases including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey; and documents describing both Law and NYU's opposition to the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. Correspondence, press releases, drafts, and reviews of Law's book, Pain and Profit: The Politics of Malpractice (1979) and her article "Rethinking Sex and the Constitution" can be found in the collection.
The collection also contains Law's sabbatical request, which includes an overview of how she was intending to use this time, the type of research she planned to conduct focusing on health care financing in Hawai'i, and her reasons for pursuing this topic.
The majority of this collection consists of correspondence between Law and her colleagues; civil rights, non-profits, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and social justice organizations including the Non-Traditional Employment for Women (NEW); faculty and students at the NYU School of Law; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and publishers, journal editors, and writing collaborators. Some correspondence focuses upon the formation and work of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography; and the formation of the Constitution of Nicaragua and MADRE, a women's rights movement in Nicaragua.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials in Box 8 relate to resumes; job and fellowship recommendations; and student grades -- all of which fall under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and are restricted for 75 years. One folder in Box 8 contains medical information and personal identifying information that is under protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This information will be restricted for 50 years following the date of death of the individual. For questions regarding specific restrictions, please contact the New York University Archives, (212) 998-2646, university-archives@nyu.edu.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Sylvia Law in 2019. The accession number associated with this gift is 2019.031.
About this Guide
Processing Information
At the time of accessioning, materials were placed in acid free boxes and some materials were rehoused into acid free folders. Original order and titles, if existing, were retained. Materials were described on the collection-level with a folder-level inventory.
In January 2025, the collection was processed and arranged by an archivist. During processing, all materials were rehoused into legal manuscript boxes and folders. Folder titles were retained unless they did not accurately reflect the folder's contents, in which case, a more suitable title was added. Correspondence was consolidated and listed in chronological order. For duplicate materials, two archival copies were retained and the rest were discarded.
Materials protected under FERPA; a small amount of correspondence related to Pain and Profit: The Politics of Malpractice, and certain financial documents were grouped together and placed in Box 8, which is restricted. Personal documents and family photographs were removed from the collection and returned to the donor.