by Debra Talcott
Legal News
For Wayne State University Law Professor Robert Sedler, there was never any doubt that the path he would take was a career devoted to the law. Now, 50 years and nearly 6,000 students later, Sedler still loves teaching, discussing, and writing about contemporary legal issues as much as he did in 1959 when he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.
“If you were a boy in my era, growing up in a Jewish family of modest means, you knew you were going to go to college, and the choice was either to become a doctor or a lawyer. A definition of ‘lawyer’ in my era was ‘an ambitious Jewish boy who couldn’t stand the sight of blood,’” Sedler quips, referencing the popular Philip Roth book of 1969, Portnoy’s Complaint.
As a college student active in Democratic politics in Pittsburgh, and President of the organization Students for Stevenson, Sedler says his original plan was to finish his law degree and go into
politics. “I had gone to the Democratic Convention in 1956, but the election defeat of [Adlai] Stevenson that year was a real downer for me,” says Sedler, and “I thought that my left-wing views could make a political life difficult for me. By that time, I was in law school and really liked the law. Upon graduation, I got a job as a Teaching and Research Associate at Rutgers Law School in Newark, and I decided that I wanted to go into the academic side of law.”
At the same time, Sedler wanted to devote his skills as a lawyer to advancing social causes he supported. In his first tenure-track position at St. Louis University in the early 1960s, he successfully litigated a school desegregation case for the Missouri NAACP. Sedler continued to dedicate his career to academics and legal activism as a professor at the University of Kentucky and, ultimately, Wayne State.
The academic side of his career has Sedler teaching two popular courses at Wayne, Constitutional Law and Conflict of Laws. Sedler says students like the Consti-tutional Law course because it deals with current issues, such as civil rights and civil liberties. He explains, however, that people are often confused about the course called Conflict of Laws.
“Conflict of Laws is not about conflict in the ordinary sense,” says Sedler. “It is that body of law that deals with controversies between people of different American states or an American state and a foreign state.”
The professor gives an example of two drivers from Michigan who are involved in an auto accident in Ohio. Michigan tort law allows recovery, while Ohio tort law does not.
“So the conflict of laws question is whether Michigan law applies or Ohio law applies,” he explains.
The legal activism side of Sedler’s career has played out a multitude of times in a multitude of ways.
“I did a good deal of civil rights and civil liberties litigation in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I came back in 2008 to litigate one of the cases involving the former mayor,” says Sedler.
One memorable case from 1986 was Committee to End Racism in Michigan’s Child Care System v. Mansour. It had been the practice of the Michigan Department of Social Services (now Depart-
ment of Human Services) to use what Sedler calls “rigid racial matching” in adoption and foster care.
“A number of foster parents were white, and due to a shortage of African-American foster parents, a number of white foster parents were fostering African-American foster children. As soon as an African-American home be-
came available, the African-American children were taken away..., in some cases literally kicking and screaming,” says Sedler. Additionally, the department would not allow white foster parents to adopt African-American foster children or vice versa — even if this rule meant that the children who could have been adopted would remain in the foster care system.
The federal court decree in Committee to End Racism in Michigan’s Child Care System v. Mansour changed everything. Racial discrimination in child care and adoption is now illegal.
Says Sedler. “Today, African-American and white foster parents work together, and the result is that racial discrimination has been removed from Michigan’s child care system. This has resulted in a substantial number of African-American children being adopted who otherwise would have remained in foster care until they ‘aged out.’”
Sedler has held a number of appointments in the United States and abroad. His most notable appointment was in Ethiopia at what is now known as Addis Ababa University School of Law from 1963-66.
“This was an opportunity to help develop the rule of law in a country which then was operating under an emperor, but which saw a democratic country in the future. Things didn’t quite turn out that way, but there is still hope for democracy there.”
Recruited to be part of the Ford Foundation’s efforts to support legal education in English-speaking countries in Africa, Sedler and his wife Rozanne thought they were signing up for a one-year commitment, with the possibility of staying for two. The couple stayed three years, with Rozanne taking a position in the University’s School of Social Work while there.
The couple spent their summers traveling in the Middle East, Europe, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. They learned about life in a variety of cultures and were able to view our American culture differently from that distance.
“In 2009, Rozanne was appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court to a three-year term as a layperson member of the Michigan Attorney-Grievance Commission,” Sedler explains.
The years in which the Sedlers were raising their young family were the same years that found America taking sides on social issues such as school desegregation, racial discrimination, women’s rights, the war in Vietnam, and the draft.
“Two of my cases, one a draft resistance case in 1970, and a lawyer contempt case in 1974, made it to the United States Supreme Court. I managed to win both cases,” says Sedler.
Robert and Rozanne Sedler are strong supporters of the ACLU, their temple, and the Reform Jewish Movement.
“I have been involved with the ACLU throughout my career, and Rozanne has been involved more recently. And we support the Democratic Party,” he adds. “As Jewish-Americans, we are strong supporters of Israel, although at times, such as the present, we are very critical of the government.”
Sedler is the first to admit that they are busier than other couples their age, and he attributes their continued energy to maintaining cultural interests such as the symphony and theater, and to exercise.
Whatever the source of his stamina, none will argue that Robert Sedler has earned his excellent and extensive reputation as a lawyer and scholar.
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