Letters: Judge Norma Shapiro - a true trailblazer

ISSUE | JUDGE SHAPIRO

A true trailblazer

It is unfortunate that Senior U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro died just a few days before the Democrats made history by being the first major party to nominate a woman candidate for president of the United States ("Norma Shapiro; pioneering set prison cap," Saturday). Judge Shapiro made history, too.

Graduating in 1951 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, she was a token woman in a man's profession. Her career of firsts was significant, including: first female partner at the Dechert law firm, first woman judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, first woman member and chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association board of governors, and first recipient of the Bar's Sandra Day O'Connor Award.

She was a proud mother of three sons and took a hiatus from practice to be a stay-at-home mom. Always a community activist, she took that time to serve on the Lower Merion school board and later served as president of the Jewish Publication Society.

She set the standard as a fair, just, hardworking, respected, and ethical jurist - tough but compassionate. She broke many glass ceilings and counseled woman lawyers of all ages to do the same. She was my mentor, inspiration, and dear friend.

|Enid H. Adler, Philadelphia

Tackled city jails

If the Philadelphia prison overcrowding suit was Judge Norma Shapiro's "best-known case," it deserved a fuller and more accurate account than it received in her obituary. Philadelphia's criminal justice center and its largest, most modern jail owe their existence to Shapiro, who ramrodded the two building projects as the presiding judge in Harris v. City of Philadelphia, in which I was lead counsel for the plaintiff class.

Shapiro enforced agreements between inmates and the city aimed at combating mass incarceration in overcrowded, unsafe jails. When the jails were filled, Shapiro invited then-District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham to identify indigent defendants awaiting trial whose release or nonadmission was least likely to endanger public safety. Abraham left the task to the court, which discharged it judiciously.

As for the charge that "many of the released prisoners went on to commit serious crimes," the only people who were not jailed were poor people charged with nonviolent offenses and entitled to release on bail.

Judge Shapiro helped hundreds of men and women who were diverted into treatment for substance abuse or mental-health problems and thousands who were spared confinement in Philadelphia's overcrowded jails.

|David Richman, Ardmore, richmand@pepperlaw.com