Professor of Clinical Law Holly Maguigan received the Great Teacher Award from the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), the largest membership organization of law professors in the US, at its 40th anniversary dinner on January 3 at NYU’s Kimmel Center. Maguigan, who joined the Law School faculty in 1987, has taught Evidence, Global Public Service Lawyering: Theory and Practice, and the Comparative Criminal Justice Clinic: Focus on Domestic Violence.
An expert on the criminal trials of battered women, Maguigan has long focused in her litigation and scholarship on obstacles to justice faced by defendants outside the dominant culture. She is a past co-president of SALT, and a board member of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. Previous Great Teacher Award winners, nominated by SALT’s membership, include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as well as NYU Law faculty members Harry T. Edwards, the late Derrick Bell, Anthony Amsterdam, Sylvia Law ’68, and Norman Dorsen, who was SALT’s inaugural president.
The program for SALT’s annual dinner featured testimonials from Maguigan’s former students, among them public interest lawyer Michele Host ’00. “She taught me to listen to, respect, and represent my clients the way I would want my brother or my child to be treated,” Host wrote, “and she assured me that the rest would just follow. She was right.... There are many things that make Holly Maguigan a great teacher. Her compassion. Her intellect. Her wit. But it is her willingness to treat students, clients, and colleagues like family that makes her an extraordinary one.”
Posted on January 8, 2014