Justine Wise Polier and her struggle for juvenile justice in New York City

This dissertation is a historical study of Justine Wise Polier's (1903--1987) work on behalf of the children of New York City. Particular attention is paid to her efforts to secure children's educational rights and their rights in school. Polier was the first women in New York to rise above the position of Magistrate and she sat on the bench of New York City's Children's Court from 1935 to 1972. She was a leading expert on children's law, and cohered a pioneering group of social reformers from the fields of mental hygiene, child psychiatry, social work, and education that molded New York's child welfare system. This study elucidates Polier's contributions to these fields. In doing so it also illuminates the history of the children's courts, and shows the way they were connected to the development of the public schools, private reformatories, and other child-caring institutions.; This dissertation documents Polier's upbringing, from her relationship with her parents, who were both leaders in New York City's Jewish community, to her work in the labor movement in the 1920's. Polier's judicial career is treated in detail, and examples of both her on- and off-bench activism on behalf of children are analyzed. Polier's work on the Committee on Institutions, which was created to oversee New York City's child-caring institutions, her leadership on an action-research project in three Harlem Junior High Schools, and her founding of the Wiltwyck School for Protestant Negro Boys are all addressed. Also included are analyses of Polier's education-related adjudications, which illuminate conditions in New York City's schools as well as Polier's judicial activism. Polier's 1958 case on the de facto segregation of New York City's schools, the Skipwith case, is presented in detail and is shown to be a harbinger of the community control movement.