Nina S. Appel (born February 17, 1936) was the first female dean of

Loyola Law School Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. Academics Degrees offered include the Juris Doctor (JD); Master of Science in Legal ...

, known for her commitment to ethical education and her passion for torts law.

Biography

Nina Schick Appel was born in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

on February 17, 1936 to Leo and Nora (Thein) Schick. Her family was Jewish. She earned her undergraduate degree at Cornell where she met

Alfred Appel Alfred Appel Jr. (January 31, 1934 – May 2, 2009) was an American professor, author and journal editor noted for his investigations into the works of Vladimir Nabokov, modern art, and jazz modernism. He edited ''The Annotated Lolita'', an edi ...

, whom she went on to marry in 1957. She went on to graduate Columbia law school in 1959, by dual enrolling as an undergrad, graduating in the same class as

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President ...

. After graduating she lived in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

and lectured and designed courses at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. While living in Palo Alto she had two children, Karen and

Richard Appel Richard James Appel (born May 21, 1963) is an American writer, producer and former Attorney at law, attorney. Since 2012, he has served as an executive producer and co-showrunner of ''Family Guy'' on Fox. He attended Harvard University and Harvar ...

. In 1973, she was hired at

by dean Charles R. Purcell as a law teacher, and she immediately began to teach in torts, administrative law, products liability, and evidence. Specifically she was interested in different aspects of torts law: third party actions, products liability, and medial law. In 1976, she was promoted to full professor and then to associate dean by dean Charles W. Murdock, whom she would eventually succeed as dean. She was the unanimous choice of the search committee in 1983, when she was appointed the dean of Loyola Law school despite being a woman in a male-dominant field and

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

at a

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institution. She served as the dean until 2004, when she took the title of dean emerita. As dean, she was given many honors and awards, served on many important committees and panels (including as the chair of the ABA section on Legal Education from 1992–93) and fought to educate lawyers so that they could properly defend and help disadvantaged communities. She retired as dean emerita on April 26, 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Appel, Nina 1936 births Living people Loyola Law School faculty Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States Cornell University alumni Columbia Law School alumni 20th-century American women lawyers 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American women lawyers 21st-century American lawyers American university and college faculty deans Women deans (academic) American women academics