Faculty Directory

Judith Olans Brown

Bio

As a faculty member, and since her retirement from Northeastern in 2000, Judy Brown has been a passionate advocate for the advancement of women attorneys and students from Northeastern Law. In 2013, she was selected by the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts to receive the prestigious Lelia J. Robinson Award. Since her formal retirement, she has taught constitutional law in the continuing education programs at Dartmouth College and the University of Arizona. She and her husband, Jim Brown, endowed the school’s Judith Olans Brown Forum for Women in the Law in 2021.

Professor Brown was one of the first women to serve as a law clerk to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, to be appointed to the board of directors of the Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and to achieve the position of tenured professor at Northeastern University School of Law, where she taught for almost 30 years. Her scholarly focus was on equality for women and people of color and her efforts in the classroom and the courtroom to expand legal and civil rights for women and minorities defined her professional life. In addition to traditional scholarship, Brown drafted numerous civil rights statutes and authored several amicus briefs in her areas of expertise.

Professor Brown graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1962 and from Boston College Law School in 1965. She won numerous academic honors at both schools and was the articles editor of the Boston College Law Review.