Originally published on the Boston University School of Law website.
The award honors a lawyer whose work has had a significant impact on women, the legal community, and the academy.
Professor of Law and Michaels Faculty Research Scholar Tamar Frankel has been selected to receive the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Law School’s (AALS) Section on Women in Legal Education.
The award, first presented in 2013 to US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was created to honor a lawyer “who has impacted women, the legal community, the academy, and the issues that affect women through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and by providing opportunities to others,” according to the AALS.
“Needless to say, I have admired Justice Ginsburg for a very long time,” Frankel says. “I followed her, and to some extent I identify with a lot of what she says.”
Frankel is a well-known expert in fiduciary law. She has taught at BU Law since the fall of 1967, when she joined the faculty as a lecturer. She became an assistant professor of law in 1968, and a full professor in 1971. She was the first woman at BU Law appointed to a tenure-track position, and the first to earn tenure.
“I was the first, yes? And the only one,” Frankel recalls, indicating a black-and-white photograph of herself as the lone woman among the BU faculty members. “It didn’t make a big impression on me, but it made a big impression on them.” Today, she says, about half the BU Law faculty “are women, and great ones.”
