KINOY, Arthur 1920-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born September 29, 1920, in New York, NY; died September 19, 2003, in Montclair, NJ. Attorney, educator, and author. Kinoy, who specialized in civil rights issues, is best remembered as one of the lawyers who defended the Chicago Seven and for being a cofounder of the Center for Constitutional Rights in Manhattan. Earning his A.B. from Harvard University in 1941, he fought with the U.S. Army in North African and Italy during World War II. Returning home, he attended Columbia Law School, where he was executive editor of the law review and graduated in 1947. During the 1950s, he was a partner in the law firm of Donner, Kinoy & Perlin in New York City, and from 1964 to 1967 he was a partner with Kunstler, Kunstler & Kinoy. Always active in civil rights issues, Kinoy was involved in a number of important cases during the 1950s and 1960s, including defending accused spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg during their final appeal in 1951, winning the 1965 Dombrowski v. Pfister case concerning freedom of speech before the Supreme Court, and successfully getting the Chicago Seven antiwar protestors, including Abbie Hoffman, off on appeal in 1969. Furthermore, in 1972, it was Kinoy who argued before the Supreme Court that President Richard Nixon had no authority to set up wire taps on telephones. He was also the cofounder and copresident of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been an active legal center since 1966. Kinoy became a professor of law at Rutgers University in 1964, and he later had to defend himself against the university's forced retirement policy when he turned seventy. He managed to win his case to the extent that Rutgers allowed him to stay if he could find funding for his position, but his inability to do so compelled him to retire in 1991 as professor emeritus. In addition to his trial and classroom work, Kinoy was the author of Rights on Trial: The Odyssey of a People's Lawyer (1983).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2003, p. B11. New York Times, September 20, 2003, p. B15.

Times (London, England), September 25, 2003.