Betsy Levin was the first tenured woman on the faculty of Duke Law School and, for a time, the only woman law dean in the US. She received her law degree in 1966 from Yale Law School, where she was Topics Editor of the Yale Law Review. She clerked for Judge and former US Solicitor General Simon E. Sobeloff of the US Court of Appeals in Virginia—making her one of the first two women clerks on the 4th Circuit. Levin then served as an assistant to former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg during his tenure as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations in New York and then later returned to Washington, DC as Director of Education Studies at the Urban Institute.
In 1973, Levin joined the legal academy at Duke Law School. Her teaching and prolific writing centered on educational policy and equal opportunity, constitutional law, and the courts. While she was on sabbatical in 1980, President Carter appointed Levin as the first general counsel of the newly-established US Department of Education. She was then recruited by the University of Colorado Law School, where she became Dean and Professor of Law in 1981. She was the school’s first woman dean, and, at the time, the only woman law dean in the United States.
She became involved with AALS during her six-year deanship, serving on the AALS Accreditation Committee and the Special Committee to Review the Requirements for Membership. She was elected to the AALS Executive Committee in 1983, serving through 1985. Levin then became the AALS Executive Director and served from 1987 to 1992. Her tenure at AALS was marked by her characteristic commitment to increasing opportunity and diversity within AALS and the profession. She worked toward a more secure financial and long-term future for the organization, commissioning a long-range planning study and updating membership requirements.
Throughout her career, she served on several committees on education, educational financing, and women’s rights including the ACLU; as a Residential Fellow at the National Institute of Education; on several ABA Committees and Task Forces; as a White House Fellow; and as an elected member of the American Law Institute Council. After leaving AALS, Levin continued to teach in a variety of adjunct and distinguished visiting professor positions until her retirement in 2009.
AALS honors and remembers Levin for her commitment and lasting impact to AALS and the entire legal academy.