Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. (Ref)

Justine Wise Polier 1903-1987

A passionate voice for justice, Justine Wise Polier was New York's first woman Justice, serving from 1935 to 1973 as a Domestic Relations Court judge. The daughter of the prominent rabbi Stephen Wise, a leading Zionist and a founder of the American Jewish Congress, Polier brought her own activism to her service as Yale Law Journal editor, assistant corporate counsel for New York's Workman's Compensation Division, and as a family court judge who tirelessly advocated for the poor and disempowered. A close acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt, Polier unsuccessfully appealed to the President's wife to help relax the immigrantion quotas for European Jewish refugees. Polier later headed Louise Wise Services, a Jewish foster care and adoption agency founded by her mother.