13 Facts About Gerald Gunther

Gerald Gunther was a German-born American constitutional law scholar and a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School from 1962 until his death in 2002.

Gerald Gunther was born on May 26,1927, in Usingen im Taunus, Germany, where his family had worked as butchers for over three centuries.

Gerald Gunther entered primary school during the same year in which Adolf Hitler gained power.

In school, Gerald Gunther experienced virulent anti-Semitism; a Nazi schoolteacher labelled Gerald Gunther "Jew-pig" and segregated him from his classmates.

From 1953 to 1954, following his graduation from Harvard, Gerald Gunther clerked for Judge Learned Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and from 1954 to 1955, for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court.

At Columbia, Gerald Gunther mentored future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959.

Gerald Gunther advised Ginsburg on how to broaden constitutional protections to women when she was a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, And in July 1993, Gerald Gunther testified for Ginsburg at her Senate confirmation hearings.

In 1962, Gerald Gunther left Columbia for Stanford Law School, where he became the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law in 1972, taking emeritus status in 1995.

At Stanford, Gerald Gunther, who was motivated by his childhood experiences in Nazi Germany, became an outspoken defender of civil liberties, particularly the right to freedom of speech.

In 1976, Gerald Gunther famously defended the freedom of speech rights of American Nazis, And in 1988, Gerald Gunther opposed a Stanford University ban on expressions of racial or religious intolerance.

In 1987, in a survey of lawyers conducted by the National Law Journal, Gerald Gunther was voted as the most qualified candidate for the United States Supreme Court.

Gerald Gunther was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

The scene has Gunther playing a Tenth Circuit judge in a moot court to prepare Ruth Bader Ginsburg for an oral argument in Moritz v Commissioner.