Hon. Kristin Booth Glen joined the Board in 1996 while she was still Dean of CUNY School of Law. She started her career as a civil rights lawyer after graduating from Columbia Law School and clerking for the Second Circuit at Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard, where she litigated a number of prisoners’ rights cases, most notably Sostre v. Rockefeller (solitary confinement; retaliation for First Amendment activity) and Gomez v. Miller, a case involving misuse of penal facilities for persons found incompetent to stand, which was successful in the U.S. Supreme Court. She was elected as a civil court judge in 1980 and elected to New York State Supreme Court in 1986. As a judge, she wrote major, cutting-edge decisions in a wide range of areas including AIDS, sexual harassment, the rights of the physically and mentally challenged, the elderly, and on constitutional issues such as free speech.

A founder of the Women’s Law Clinic at New York University, she has been a legal educator in various law schools for more than twenty years. In 1995, she was appointed Dean of the City University of New York School of Law. In 1998, Glen was named Law School Dean of the Year by the National Association for Public Interest Law and in 1999, she was honored by the National Lawyers Guild. Judge Glen notes that coming to PLS was really a return to her roots, and to issues about which she has always cared deeply.