Bernard Meltzer, 92, Labor Expert and Nuremberg Prosecutor, Dies
By DENNIS HEVESI
The New York Times
Bernard D. Meltzer, a law professor who helped bring clarity to labor-management issues at a time of great change in the field, who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and who helped draft the United Nations Charter, died Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 92.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Jean Sulzberger Meltzer.
Mr. Meltzer was the Edward H. Levi distinguished service professor emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Law, where he taught from 1946 until 1985.
Soon after joining the faculty, he delved into controversial and complicated labor-law issues that, for the most part, had been set aside during World War II. They included interpretations of the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932, which sharply restricted injunctions against striking unions, and of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which created a statutory framework for collective bargaining.
“It was not that Bernie came up with grand conclusions,” said Richard A. Epstein, a colleague at the University of Chicago who has also written extensively on labor law. “He was a terrific technical lawyer who smoothed the awkward edges of very complicated statutory schemes.”
Mr. Meltzer’s writings dealt with a wide variety of labor issues. These included whether federal statutes pre-empt state labor laws, and the legality of secondary boycotts, those in which a union takes action against companies doing business with the company that the union is seeking to organize. His articles were often cited in modern works and current cases, Professor Epstein said.
In his later years, Mr. Meltzer continued to write, while sometimes also serving as a special master in labor disputes, a consultant to the Department of Labor and a salary arbitrator for major league baseball.
Bernard David Meltzer was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 21, 1914, one of six children of Julius and Rose Wolkov Meltzer, both immigrants from Russia. His father was a shoe salesman.
In addition to his wife of 60 years, he is survived by a son, Daniel, of Cambridge, Mass.; two daughters, Joan FitzGibbon of Indianapolis and Susan Yost of Columbus, Ohio; and six grandchildren.
Mr. Meltzer earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1935 and his law degree there two years later, graduating first in his class. In 1938, he received a master’s of law degree from Harvard University.
After working at a Chicago law firm, Mr. Meltzer went to Washington as an aide to Dean Acheson, who was then an assistant secretary of state. In 1943, Mr. Meltzer joined the Navy and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the closing days of the war, at the request of the State Department, he was reassigned to go to San Francisco to assist in drafting the United Nations Charter. He dealt in particular with the provisions establishing the General Assembly.
In 1946, while still in the Navy, Mr. Meltzer was assigned to the United States prosecution staff for the Nuremberg war crime trials.
He led a team of lawyers who gathered evidence against business executives who had helped finance the Nazi war machine and against defendants accused of plundering occupied territories and profiting from the use of millions of slave laborers. He also conducted the pretrial interrogation of Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second in command, and presented the case against Walther Funk, the Third Reich’s minister of economics.
In describing the methodical record-keeping that the Nazis employed for their system of death camps, Mr. Meltzer wrote in 1999, “It was a lawyer’s dream, but a humanist’s nightmare.”
The New York Times
Bernard D. Meltzer, a law professor who helped bring clarity to labor-management issues at a time of great change in the field, who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and who helped draft the United Nations Charter, died Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 92.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Jean Sulzberger Meltzer.
Mr. Meltzer was the Edward H. Levi distinguished service professor emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Law, where he taught from 1946 until 1985.
Soon after joining the faculty, he delved into controversial and complicated labor-law issues that, for the most part, had been set aside during World War II. They included interpretations of the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932, which sharply restricted injunctions against striking unions, and of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which created a statutory framework for collective bargaining.
“It was not that Bernie came up with grand conclusions,” said Richard A. Epstein, a colleague at the University of Chicago who has also written extensively on labor law. “He was a terrific technical lawyer who smoothed the awkward edges of very complicated statutory schemes.”
Mr. Meltzer’s writings dealt with a wide variety of labor issues. These included whether federal statutes pre-empt state labor laws, and the legality of secondary boycotts, those in which a union takes action against companies doing business with the company that the union is seeking to organize. His articles were often cited in modern works and current cases, Professor Epstein said.
In his later years, Mr. Meltzer continued to write, while sometimes also serving as a special master in labor disputes, a consultant to the Department of Labor and a salary arbitrator for major league baseball.
Bernard David Meltzer was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 21, 1914, one of six children of Julius and Rose Wolkov Meltzer, both immigrants from Russia. His father was a shoe salesman.
In addition to his wife of 60 years, he is survived by a son, Daniel, of Cambridge, Mass.; two daughters, Joan FitzGibbon of Indianapolis and Susan Yost of Columbus, Ohio; and six grandchildren.
Mr. Meltzer earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1935 and his law degree there two years later, graduating first in his class. In 1938, he received a master’s of law degree from Harvard University.
After working at a Chicago law firm, Mr. Meltzer went to Washington as an aide to Dean Acheson, who was then an assistant secretary of state. In 1943, Mr. Meltzer joined the Navy and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the closing days of the war, at the request of the State Department, he was reassigned to go to San Francisco to assist in drafting the United Nations Charter. He dealt in particular with the provisions establishing the General Assembly.
In 1946, while still in the Navy, Mr. Meltzer was assigned to the United States prosecution staff for the Nuremberg war crime trials.
He led a team of lawyers who gathered evidence against business executives who had helped finance the Nazi war machine and against defendants accused of plundering occupied territories and profiting from the use of millions of slave laborers. He also conducted the pretrial interrogation of Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second in command, and presented the case against Walther Funk, the Third Reich’s minister of economics.
In describing the methodical record-keeping that the Nazis employed for their system of death camps, Mr. Meltzer wrote in 1999, “It was a lawyer’s dream, but a humanist’s nightmare.”
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