Sovern, Michael Ira
SOVERN, MICHAEL IRA
SOVERN, MICHAEL IRA (1931– ), U.S. legal scholar and arbitrator. Sovern, who was born in New York City, received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1955. He taught at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1955–58, then at Columbia Law School, becoming a full professor in 1960, the youngest modern Columbia faculty member to achieve this rank. As a legal scholar Sovern's main interest was labor relations and employment discrimination. He published Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment (1966) and was co-author of the text Cases and Materials on Law and Poverty (1969). He served as special counsel on the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Industrial and Labor Conditions. Working for effective legal services for the poor, Sovern helped found the Legal Services Unit of Mobilization for Youth. He supervised legal education for civil rights lawyers and chaired the committee on labor and industry of the American Civil Liberties Union. Sovern devoted effort to advancing public understanding of the U.S. legal system through his television series Due Process for the Accused.
As a labor arbitrator in public and private disputes, he arbitrated disputes in the New York City public schools, Pan American World Airways, and the New York Telephone Company, among others. Active in mediation during the 1968 disorders at Columbia, he presided over the faculty executive committee, which examined the causes of the disruption and made recommendations for their alleviation, which were adopted. In 1970 he was appointed dean of Columbia Law School, the first Jew to hold this post. He emphasized that skill in conciliation, as well as in adversary proceedings, should be a task of law school education. In 1979 he was named executive vice president for academic affairs and provost of the university. He assumed the role of university president in 1980, serving in that capacity until 1993. During his tenure as president he effected such achievements as creating the university's intellectual property policy, which began to bring in an annual revenue of $100 million; opening Columbia College to co-education without compromising Columbia's affiliate, Barnard College for women; increasing student scholarships and expanding the enrollment of minority students; and negotiating the sale of Columbia's land under Rockefeller Center to the Rockefeller family for $400 million, which enabled the university to improve its facilities and increase salaries. In 1993 he was named president emeritus and returned to teaching at the university's law school.
Sovern wrote Legal Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment (1966) and Of Boundless Domains (1994).
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]