Frank Askin was appointed to the faculty of Rutgers School of Law-Newark immediately upon his graduation with highest honors in 1966. In 1970, along with the late Arthur Kinoy, he established the Constitutional Litigation Clinic as part of the law school’s curriculum, and he continues to serve as its director. Under Professor Askin’s guidance, the clinic litigated the first police surveillance cases in the nation; battled the FBI over the investigation and maintenance of files on two precocious New Jersey high schoolers who corresponded with “the wrong persons”; defended affirmative action programs up to the U.S. Supreme Court; challenged the New Jersey State Police for stopping and searching “long-haired travelers” on the state’s highways; argued for the right of the homeless to vote and to have access to public library facilities; and protected the right of grass-roots advocacy groups to take their messages door-to-door and to privately owned shopping malls. Most recently, Professor Askin and his students have successfully extended the free speech provisions of the New Jersey Constitution to protect homeowners in privately-run residential communities, and are currently litigating the right of eligible voters to cast their ballot through same-day voter registration. Professor Askin was a member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union for 40 years and was one of the ACLU’s four general counsel from 1976 until 2014. Frank Askin has trained generations of public interest lawyers to use the law as an instrument of social justice, and is the senior mentor of much of the public interest bar in New Jersey.
—Ronald K. Chen
