Biography
Nancy Duff Campbell is a founder and Co-President of the National Women's Law Center, one of the nation's pre-eminent women's rights organizations. A recognized expert on women's law and public policy issues, for over forty years Ms. Campbell has participated in the development and implementation of key legislative initiatives and litigation protecting women's rights, with a particular emphasis on issues affecting low-income women and their families.
Ms. Campbell's accomplishments include participation in successful Supreme Court litigation establishing that two-parent families with unemployed mothers are entitled to AFDC benefits, in Califano v. Westcott; counsel in Haffer v. Temple University, the first case to successfully challenge an entire intercollegiate athletic program on sex discrimination grounds; organization and leadership of the Coalition on Women and Taxes, whose analyses and advocacy led to expanded tax assistance for single heads of household and the removal of six million low income families from the tax rolls in the Tax Reform Act of 1986; counsel in Parents Without Partners v. Massinga, which established a uniform right to child support enforcement services for all custodial parents without regard to income; a central role in drafting and pressing a national agenda on child care, which culminated in passage in 1990 of the first comprehensive child care legislation since World War II and several improvements in the succeeding years; and advocacy to achieve congressional legislation and Department of Defense policies expanding the rights and remedies of military women facing sexual harassment, unfair family policies, and stereotyped limitations on their jobs and ability to serve in combat. She is also the author of numerous articles on women's legal issues.
Ms. Campbell has been named by Working Woman magazine as one of the top 25 heroines whose actions over the last 25 years have advanced women in the workplace, one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women's eNews, a Woman of Genius by Trinity Washington University, and the 2010 Woman Lawyer of the Year by the District of Columbia Women's Bar Association. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for her work to improve child support enforcement and was appointed by Congress to the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare, to study and make recommendations on a range of issues, including child support, custody and visitation; family services; and family and juvenile court systems. She was the only North American representative to the 2009 United Nations Conference on the Implications for Women of the Global Financial Crisis and was appointed by the Secretary of Defense to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. She is the recipient of the District of Columbia Bar's William J. Brennan Award, in recognition of her exemplary legal career dedicated to service in the public interest; Barnard College of Columbia University's Millicent Carey McIntosh Award; and the Center for Law and Social Policy's 25th Anniversary Award. She has been recognized by her law school as an "NYU Alumnus/Alumna of the Month" and by Online Colleges as one of "20 Influential Female Lawyers Every Law Student Should Know." She has been selected for inclusion in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in American Law, the American Bar Association's Women Trailblazers in the Law Oral History Project, Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975, Uncommon Women and Wikipedia. She has served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors, including its Executive Committee, as well as numerous other boards, and currently is a member of the Princeton University Center for Research on Child Wellbeing Advisory Board, Alliance for National Defense Board of Advisors, and Institute for Women's Policy Research Board of Advisors. She is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Ms. Campbell received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1965 and her law degree from New York University School of Law in 1968. Prior to her work with the National Women's Law Center, she was a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D.C. and an attorney with the Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law (now the National Center for Law and Economic Justice) in New York City.
Her professional excellence is reflected in the many professional appointments and honors she has received. She was appointed by Congress to the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare and was the principal editor of the Commission's 1996 report recommending ways to improve the determination of child custody and visitation issues, several of which have been adopted. She was appointed by the Secretary of Defense to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, and was named the sole North American representative to the United Nations' Conference on the Implications for Women of the Global Financial Crisis. She has received the District of Columbia Women's Bar Association Woman Lawyer of the Year Award, the District of Columbia Bar's William J. Brennan, Jr. Award for her "exemplary legal career dedicated to service in the public interest," Barnard College's Millicent McIntosh Award for Feminism, Trinity Washington University's Woman of Genius Award, and the Center for Law and Social Policy's 25th Anniversary Award. She has also been named by Working Woman magazine one of the Top 25 Heroines for Working Women in the Last 25 Years, by Women's eNews as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, and has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for her "untiring efforts on behalf of the children of America."
Influencing Women to Pursue Legal Careers; Opening Doors and Advancing Opportunities for Women Lawyers. Ms. Campbell's decades of work to advance the cause of women and their families have led to legal rights and public policies that have enriched the lives of virtually every woman in this country, including women lawyers. Young girls' ability to pursue any area of study, women's ability to secure child care in order to participate in the labor force, older women's retirement security, and many other advancements that benefit women in the profession are the result of her dedication and legal skills. In recognition of this, she was recently named one of 20 Influential Female Lawyers Every Law Student Should Know by Online Colleges.
Her commitment to advancing women lawyers has had a profound effect on countless numbers of women in the profession in other ways as well. At the CSWPL, in her four years of full-time law school teaching, and at NWLC, she has worked with, taught and mentored many women law students, interns, fellows, and lawyers, who now are partners in major firms around the country, judges on state and federal courts, law professors, public officials, and public interest advocates. She has also actively worked to recruit highly qualified women lawyers for positions in the federal government and has used her connections and advocacy skills to assure greater diversity in high government ranks. This includes women general counsels in Cabinet agencies, other high-level administrative positions, and judges—including as part of the NWLC team that helped secure the confirmations of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
Indeed, NWLC under her direction has a long history of developing and mentoring women law students and recent law graduates. It had a legal internship program before law schools had clinical programs, under which law students spent a semester in Washington and received equivalent course credit at their law schools; it helped found the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program, under which recent law graduates are placed at NWLC and other public interest organizations or government agencies in Washington working on women's rights issues; and it both participates in other well-known fellowship programs and has its own fellowship program to train recent law graduates on women's legal issues. She also helped start and oversees NWLC's Leadership 35 Committee—a high-level advisory committee of talented women lawyers who are emerging leaders in the private sector who both provide NWLC with advice and support on critical issues that affect women and their families and network with each other and the staff and board of NWLC. They come from law firms, general counsel offices in corporations and unions, and other organizations. In all these ways, her efforts to advance women lawyers mirror her efforts in so many other ways, both personal and professional, to advance all women in the profession.
Related Articles
Nancy Duff Campbell, A.B.A.: Previous Margaret Brent Women Law. Achievement Award Recipients, https://perma.cc/7PNH-H35N. See video of introduction and acceptance speech.
