Arnold & Porter Senior Counsel Receives ABA's John Minor Wisdom Award

Arnold & Porter LLP senior counsel Martin Glick was one of two attorneys to receive this year’s American Bar Association’s John Minor Wisdom Public Service and Professionalism Award.  The award recognizes lawyers who have made a “significant contribution to the quality of justice in the legal profession and in their communities” by making legal assistance accessible to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the underrepresented.

“Marty Glick has devoted much of his career to defending the civil rights of the downtrodden in this country,” concluded Don Bivens, chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, which is responsible for granting the recognition.  

Mr. Glick began his legal career with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and was assigned to the investigation of the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in the summer of 1964.  He worked in the South on a number of other civil rights matters, including voter registration, and an injunction against the Ku Klux Klan in Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Mr. Glick has also litigated many cases for the California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., including a class action that forced reassignment of 35,000 Chicano children inappropriately placed in classes for the mentally challenged based on culturally biased, English-only IQ tests; and with a colleague, litigation that resulted in outlawing use of the short handle hoe, a back-breaking hand tool, in California agriculture.  In addition, Mr. Glick successfully worked with a law firm team on the Phillip B case, involving a down syndrome young man denied life-saving heart surgery by his natural parents.  The case was featured on 60 Minutes and in a made for television movie.

Most recently, Mr. Glick is representing Public Advocates, Inc. client groups in a case challenging adequacy of funds provided for California public school students.