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Remarkable, brilliant, passionate, optimistic, dynamic advocate, not a warm and fuzzy person are all words used to describe Soia Mentschikoff.
She was born in Russia to American parents who returned to the United States just ahead of the revolution. Soia attended Hunter College in New York.
She was fifteen when she started. While at Hunter, she studied English and political science before beginning her law school career at Columbia University.
She graduated in 1937.
After graduation, she worked at a few Wall Street firms where she developed a specialty in labor law. Soia became a partner in the Wall Street firm of Spence, Windels, Walser, Hotchkiss & Angell in 1944 and was a partner at Spencer, Hotchkiss, Parker & Duryee from 1945-1949.
During her years practicing, Soia also began working on what would be her most famous contribution to the law, the Uniform Commercial Code. In 1942, Karl Llewellyn was nominated by the American Law Institute to be the Chief Reporter in this endeavor. By the end of that year, Soia became the Assistant Chief Reporter. She was not only instrumental in the drafting, but also in pushing for adoption of the Code. Mentschikoff was also Associate Reporter for the revised Uniform Sales Act. In addition to commercial law, she also wrote and spoke on arbitration, mediation, international law, legal education and other topics.
Soia married Karl Llewellyn in 1946. She had been his student and research assistant at Columbia. In 1951, both Llewellyn and Mentschikoff were offered positions at the University of Chicago, Llewelleyn as professor, Mentschikoff as professorial lecturer. After Llewellyn's death in 1962, she became a professor at the school. Soia remained at Chicago until 1974, but in 1967 she began teaching one semester a year at the University of Miami School of Law. In 1974, she became the dean at Miami, and she was determined to improve the national reputation of the school. She did this by limiting enrollment, by establishing a first rate library, by trying to attract the best faculty, by improving the facilities of the law school and by developing innovative programs. Her goal was to produce first rate graduates who would in turn become first rate practitioners. She retired after the 1981 academic year.
Although she was not a feminist, she is often cited for her many firsts: she was one of the first female partners in a Wall Street firm, she was the first woman to teach at Harvard and the University of Chicago, she was the first female president of the American Association of Law Schools and the first female dean at the University of Miami (although Professor M. Minnette Massey had
been acting dean prior to Soia Mentschikoff's appointment), and the second woman to head a nationally accredited law school. She was also involved in the American Bar Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and numerous other organizations.
Her contributions to the University of Miami and to the legal profession as a whole continue to be felt almost twenty years after her death.
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Bibliography of Material on Soia Mentschikoff:
Elizabeth L. Inglehart, Soia Mentschikoff: Attorney, Legal Scholar, Educator, in Women Building Chicago
1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, Rima Lunin Schultz & Adele Hast, eds. (2001).
Peter Langrock, Creating the Code: The Team of Karl Llewellyn and Soia Mentschikoff was a Driving Force in the Drafting and Adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code (The Lawyers of the Century), 21 American Lawyer 89 (December 1999).
Dawn Berry Bradley, The 50 Most Influential Women in American Law at pp. 177-182 (1996).
Soia Mentschikoff and Karl Llewellyn: Moving Together to the University of Chicago Law School, 24 Conn. L. Rev. 1119 (1992).
Irwin P. Stotzky, Soia's Way: Toiling in the Common Law Tradition, 38 U. Miami L. Rev. 373 (1983).
C.D.Rogers, Soia Mentschikoff: The Legend and the Legacy, XXXIX Univ. Miami Barrister 3 (1981).
Edward Idell, Law School News: Dean Mentschikoff to Retire, XXXVIII Univ. Miami Barrister 25 (1980).
Warren E. Burger, Tribute to Dean Soia Mentschikoff, 37 U. Miami L. Rev. ix (1982).
Who's Who in American Law 2d ed. at 612 (1979).
Robert J. Van Der Wall, A Look at the New Dean, XXXII Univ. Miami Barrister 15 (1974).
William Twining, Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement (1973).
Erwin O. Smigel, The Wall Street Lawyer, Professional Organization Man? at p. 46 (1964).
Bibliography of Material Written by Soia Mentschikoff
Books & Chapters
Cases on Commercial Transactions, Temp. ed., Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.
Commercial Code (Preliminary Tentative Draft No. 1, Article V), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1946
Commercial Code (Group No. 1), (Tentative Draft No. 2, Article III), with Karl N. Llewellyn and William L. Prosser, 1947
Commercial Code (Group No. 1) and Notes and Comments (Tentative Draft No. 1, Article IV), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1947.
Commercial Code (Group No. 2) Including Notes and Comments (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, Article V), with Karl N. Llewellyn, 1948,
Commercial Code (Group No. 3) (Notes and Comments to Tentative Draft No. 2, Article VII), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1948.
Commercial Code (Group No. 3) (Tentative Draft No. 1-3, Article VII), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1948-1949.
Commercial Code (Group No. 3) Including Notes and Comments (Tentative Draft No. 1, Article VII), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1948.
Commercial Code (Group No. 3) (Tentative Draft No. 2, Article VII), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1948.
Commercial Transactions; Cases and Materials, Boston: Little Brown, 1970
Federalism and Economic Growth, in Federalism and the New Nations of Africa, p. 191-199, ed. by David P.Curry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964
Ius Privatum Gentium, Festschrift für Max Rheinstein zum 70, Gerburtstag am 5 Juli 1969, herausgegeben von by Ernst Von Caemmerer, Soia Mentschikoff, and Konrad Zweigert, Tübingen, Deutschland: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1969.
Report of the American Bar Association Special Committee on International Unification of Private Law, with Nicholas deB Katzenbach, Chicago: American Bar Foundation, [first printed] 1961
Theory and Craft of American Law-Elements , with Irwin P. Stotzky, New York: Matthew Bender, 1981, 827 + p., reprinted as Theory and Craft of American Law, New York: Matthew Bender, 1995.
Uniform Commercial Code, with others, Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1959.
Uniform Revised Sales Act (Sales Chapter of Proposed Commercial Code), with Karl N. Llewellyn, Philadelphia, American Law Institute, 1944.
Articles
Commercial Arbitration, 61 Colum. L. Rev. 846-869 (1961).
Financing Trade, Legal Aspects of Letters of Credit and Related Secured Transactions, 11 Law. Americas 265-317 (1979).
Highlights of the Uniform Commercial Code, 27 Mod. L. Rev. 167-189 (1964).
How to Handle Letters of Credit, 19 Bus. Law. 107-116 (1963).
Law: the Last of the Universal Disciplines, with Irwin P. Stotzky, 54 U. Cin. L. Rev. 695-745 (1986).
Letters of Credit: the Need for Uniform Legislation, 23 Univ. Chi. L. Rev. 571-619 (1956).
Peaceful Repossession Under the Uniform Commercial Code: a Constitutional and Economic Analysis, 14 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 767-785 (1973).
Reflections of a Drafter, 43 Ohio St. L.J. 537-544 (1982); reprinted in Perspectives on the Uniform Commercial Code, ed. by Douglas Litowitz, p. 40-48, Durham, N.C. Carolina Academic Press, 2001,190 p.
Signifance of Arbitration-A Preliminary Inquiry, 17 Law & Contemp. Probs. 698-710 (1952).
Uniform Commercial Code: An Experiment in Democracy of Drafting, 36 A.B.A. J. 419 (1950).
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