Law professor Melissa Murray to receive 2023 Margaret Brent Award

CHICAGO, July 28, 2023 — Melissa Murray, the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at New York University School of Law in New York, is a recipient of the 2023 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.

Murray will receive the award, given annually by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, at a ceremony and reception at 3-5:30 p.m. MDT on Sunday, August 6, at the Hyatt Regency Denver during the 2023 ABA Annual Meeting.

In addition to Murray, the 2023 award recipients include Hon. Sabrina S. McKenna, Yvette Ostolaza, Deborah Willig and Jill Wine-Banks.

“These five distinguished lawyers are role models for all women in the legal profession. We honor their achievements and look forward to celebrating with them at the 2023 Margaret Brent Awards ceremony,” said Commission member Victoria Alvarez, co-chair of the Margaret Brent Awards committee.

Murray teaches constitutional law, family law, criminal law and reproductive rights and justice at NYU Law. Her writings have appeared in a range of publications, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post and The Nation.

Prior to joining the NYU Law faculty, Murray was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received the law school’s Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction, the Association of American Law School’s Derrick A. Bell Award, and, from March 2016 to June 2017, served as interim dean of the law school.

Murray is a legal analyst for MSNBC and co-hosts “Strict Scrutiny,” a podcast about the Supreme Court. Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor (now a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice) when Sotomayor was a judge with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and for Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the New York bar.

Murray earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Virginia and a law degree at Yale Law School.

For a photo of Melissa Murray, click here.

The Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, established in 1991, honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence in their area of specialty and have actively paved the way to success for other women in the profession. The award is named for Margaret Brent, the first woman lawyer in America. Brent arrived in the colonies in 1638 and was involved in 124 court cases in more than eight years, winning every case.

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