Wechsler, Herbert

▪ 2001

      American lawyer and legal scholar (b. Dec. 4, 1909, New York, N.Y.—d. April 26, 2000, New York), as director of the American Law Institute, he created a model penal code, completed in 1962, that helped state legislatures achieve greater consistency in their criminal laws. He was also noted for his successful defense of the New York Times before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1964 libel case New York Times v. Sullivan; swayed by Wechsler's arguments, the court found that public officials must prove that libelous statements were made “with actual malice” in order to win damages. A professor at Columbia Law School from 1933 to 1978, Wechsler was a highly influential legal scholar whose 1953 casebook, The Federal Courts and the Federal System, co-written with Henry Melvin Hart, became a standard legal text.

* * *