1961-1962

Hon. Florence Raider Zimmerman graduated from Hunter College in 1937, with a degree in Economics and recipient of Hunter’s Constitutional Law Prize. She received her law degree from New York Law School in 1941, one of only two women in her class. She was admitted to the bar in 1941. During college, she interned with NYC Deputy License Commissioner and feminist icon Dorothy Kenyon, and she later became an attorney for the New York City Rent and Housing Administration. An expert on rent control, she successfully argued before the NY Court of Appeals on a precedent-setting case involving the application of rent control to properties that were claimed to be “hotels.” She was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Judge Zimmerman was also active in the New York County Lawyers’  Association, where she served as a Committee Chair, and she was active in the American Bar Association. She was appointed a NYC Civil Court Judge in 1971. She also served as counsel for the Hunter College Alumnae Association after her retirement from the judiciary. In 2018, at age 103, Judge Zimmerman attended Hunter College’s Alumni Celebrations as the school’s oldest living graduate and as an esteemed member of Hunter’s “Alumni Hall of Fame.” She passed away in 2021.