American Cities: Law, Survival and the Administration of Justice is the title of a multi-week symposium held at The New School between October 6 and December 1, 1971. As a part of the Short Courses and Special Lectures offerings of The New School that year, the symposium was open to the public for a registration fee. Each symposium session consisted of presentations by individual panelists, followed by moderated discussion with questions from the audience.

The titles of the individual sessions in the symposium were originally advertised as: Detection Technology and Civil Liberties; Police and Enforcement; Drugs and Crime; Punishment, Correction and Rehabilitation; Psychiatry and Law; Social Change, Revolution and the Courts; The Rich, the Poor and the Middle; and Planning and the Future Administration of Justice.

The panels focused on various aspects of criminal justice, especially as they pertained to urban life in the United States, including the use of wiretapping, civil liberties, policing, drugs, forensic psychiatry, the “insanity defense,” prisons, the courts, and social class.

The sessions were moderated by Martin Gallent (1931-2006) and Joseph S. Lobenthal, Jr. (1930-). Gallent, an attorney, was a New York City planning commissioner from 1969 to 1985 and vice chairman of the New York City Planning Commission from 1973 to 1985, who advocated for open spaces in urban environments. Lobenthal was a New York attorney who wrote Growing Up Clean in America (1971), a book of legal advice geared toward young people, and Power and Put-On: The Law in America (1971), an examination of the practical workings of the legal system in America.

Prominent panelists who participated in the American Cities lectures include: William Rehnquist (1924-2005), an assistant attorney general in 1971 who was later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986 to 2005; Louis Nizer (1902-1994), a celebrity lawyer who authored several books, including the best-seller My Life in Court (1962); Renatus Hartogs (1909-1998), the controversial psychiatrist who had examined a teen-aged Lee Harvey Oswald in 1953; and Nat Hentoff (1925-2017), author and longtime columnist for The Village Voice newspaper from 1958 to 2009. Other panelists included attorneys Henry “Hank” Ruth, Sheila Rush Okpaku, and Gerald Lefcourt, former U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, psychiatrist Daniel Schwartz; New School sociology professor Ernest Van Den Haag, law professor Fred Cohen, and police commissioner George McGrath.

Bibliography

Collection Overview. “Biographical Note.” 2011. Renatus Hartogs Collection. Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, New York, New York. https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/19884.

Course Catalogs. “New School Bulletin, Fall 1971.” 1971. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

Hevesi, Dennis. “Martin Gallent, 75, a Champion of Open Spaces, Dies.” New York Times, July 19, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/nyregion/19gallent.html.

McFadden, Robert D. “Nat Hentoff, Journalist and Social Commentator, Dies at 91.” New York Times, January 7, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/nyregion/nat-hentoff-dead.html.

Pace, Eric. “Louis Nizer, Lawyer to the Famous, Dies at 92.” New York Times, November 11, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/11/obituaries/louis-nizer-lawyer-to-the-famous-dies-at-92.html

Smentkowski, Brian P. “William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of United States.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified September 27, 2021. Accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Rehnquist.

Martin Gallent was an attorney, New School faculty member, and City Planning Commissioner for New York City. Gallant taught part-time for the New School’s J. M. Kaplan Center for New York City Affairs, teaching the courses “Decentralization: Panacea or Boondoggle” in Fall 1972, “Case Studies in City Planning” in Spring 1976 and “Case Studies in Urban Planning” in Fall 1985. In Spring 1981, he was a panelist at the New School conference “The Streets of New York: A Conference on City Spaces”, on a panel on “Corporate Public Spaces: Design and Use.” He was a co-organizer, alongside Joseph Lobenthal, of the 1971 New School special lecture series “American Cities: Law, Survival, and the Administration of Justice."

Joseph Spiro Lobenthal, Jr. was an attorney, legal scholar, New School faculty member, and author. Receiving his M.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, Lobenthal was a partner at the law firm of Waldman and Lobenthal, and a member of both the New York and U.S. federal bar. Outside of practicing law, he also taught the subject, lecturing at Brooklyn College, New York University, and at the New York City Correction Academy, the training unit of New York’s prison service. He briefly taught at the New School, teaching one section of the New School College course, “Sub-Cultures and the Larger Community,” in the 1967-1968 school year. In 1971, he was a co-organizer, alongside Martin Gallent, of the New School special lecture series “American Cities: Law, Survival, and the Administration of Justice.” Lobenthal also served as the Assistant Director of Rehabilitation at the New York City Department of Correction, and authored two books: Power and Put-On: The Law in America and Growing Up Clean in America.

Sources:

The New School (1971). New School Bulletin 1971 Fall Vol. 28 No. 11 [catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1971fa>

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The New School (1972). City Almanac: A Bulletin of the Metropolitan Information Service, Vol. 7, No. 2 [periodical]. Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS021001_000034>

The New School (1975). Gallent and Wagner teach Center for NYC Affairs courses [press release]. New School Press Release Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1976sp>

The New School (1975). New School Bulletin 1976 Spring Vol. 33 No. 5 [catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1976sp>

The New School (1980). New School Bulletin 1981 Spring Vol. 38 No. 5 [catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1981sp>

The New School (1985). New School Bulletin 1985 Fall Vol. 43 No. 1 [catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. The New School Archives and Special Collections. /digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1985fa>

The New School (1967-1969). “New School College: Faculty and instructors: Lobenthal, Joseph J.”. New School Adult Division Office of the Dean records (box 3, folder 56). New School Archives and Special Collections.