1990-1991

Katharine S. J. Law grew up in the segregated South, where she witnessed injustice on a daily basis. Fifteen years after graduating from Radcliffe College, she enrolled in Fordham University School of Law, and she was admitted at the age of 40. She joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where she tried senior citizen robbery and homicide cases and met her mentor, Hon. Betty Weinberg Ellerin. In her memoir, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor refers to Ms. Law as one of her own mentors, describing her as “passionate about community service [and] infinitely patient with beginners.” Ms. Law spent six years in private practice while her children were growing up, then returned to work full time – as an Assistant Attorney General for New York State, and as a Law Clerk and Law Guardian in the First Department. She was also a former director of the National Association of Childbearing Centers Foundation. She retired to San Diego, where she enjoyed a lifelong passion for sailing and volunteered as a U.S. Coast Guard vessel safety examiner, with frequent visits to her three daughters and grandchildren. She passed away in 2018.