Professor Michael Meltsner, former dean of Northeastern Law, retired in 2023 after 55 years as a leading academic at NYU, Harvard and Northeastern. Professor Daniel Medwed offers his thoughts on Professor Meltsner’s contributions and career.

Upon the retirement of a beloved colleague, it is customary to highlight their glorious professional exploits. And for Michael Meltsner, that list is extraordinarily long: legendary civil rights champion for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; brilliant architect of the successful campaign to abolish the death penalty (at least temporarily) in the 1970s; acclaimed scholar, novelist and playwright; and one of the founding figures in the birth of clinical legal education. That’s just to name a few.

What is less customary, yet more important, is to go beyond the professional and delve into the personal. I’ll give it a try. Mike is my friend, my collaborator on advocacy efforts, my neighbor in Cambridge and, for more than a decade, the first person I would ask to look at any early-stage draft of my scholarship. After his review, Mike always told me the truth, which occasionally entailed something like, “Daniel, this is not your best work. You can do better.”

Everybody should have such an authentic colleague, someone willing to tell you the hard truths you need to hear, those that most people are reluctant to impart. So, here’s the truth, and it’s not hard to tell — Mike is a rare gem of a human being and I feel his absence in the halls of Cargill every day.

— Professor Daniel Medwed