History
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (now known as the New York City Bar Association) was founded in 1870 in response to growing public concern over corruption among judges and lawyers in New York City. Several of its early officers, including William M. Evarts and Samuel Tilden, were active in seeking the removal of corrupt judges and in leading prosecutions of the notorious Tweed Ring. It counted many of the country’s most prominent lawyers among its officers, including Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes, and Samuel Seabury.
By the 1960s, under the leadership of presidents Bernard Botein and Francis T.P. Plimpton, the Association became an increasingly democratic organization, easing restrictions on membership and actively engaging in social issues. The Association hosted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Chief Justice Earl Warren, among others, and actively campaigned for initiatives such as the Equal Rights Amendment. It also played an important role in two controversial confirmation battles in the United States Supreme Court, over G. Harrold Carswell in 1970 and Robert Bork in 1987.
Since the 1980s, it has continued to diversify its membership with active recruitment efforts among women and minorities and to expand its involvement in access to justice initiatives, international human rights, and pro bono representation in many areas, including immigration, AIDS, homelessness, and criminal justice.
Since 1896, the Association has been housed in its six story landmark House at 42 West 44th Street.
Read more about this topic: New York City Bar Association
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)