Early Life
The son of a physician, Kunstler was born to a Jewish family in New York City and attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He was educated at Yale College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1941, and Columbia University Law School from which he graduated in 1948. While in school, Kunstler was an avid poet, and represented Yale in the Glascock Prize competition at Mount Holyoke College.
Kunstler served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Pacific theater, attaining the rank of Major, and received the Bronze Star. While in the army, he was noted for his theatric portrayals in the Fort Monmouth Dramatic Association.
After his discharge from the Army he attended law school, was admitted to the bar in New York in 1948 and began practicing law. Kunstler went through R.H. Macy's executive training program in the late 1940s and practiced family and small business law in the 1950s before entering civil rights litigation in the 1960s. He was an associate professor of law at New York Law School (1950–1951).
Kunstler won honorable mention for the National Legal Aid Association's press award in 1957 for his series of radio broadcasts on WNEW: "The Law on Trial." At WNEW, Kunstler also conducted interviews on controversial topics, such as the Alger Hiss case, on a program called "Counterpoint."
Kunstler attended Brant Lake Camp, in Brant Lake, New York in the Adirondacks, where he was an exceptional camper-athlete.
Read more about this topic: William Kunstler
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)
“Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of natures monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire (18801918)