Frank Askin was born on January 8, 1932 in Baltimore to Abraham and Rose (Mervis) Askin. His father, whose family immigrated from Kiev, owned the tavern in Baltimore’s Hotel Biltmore. His mother’s family came from Latvia when she was 2 years old.
Frank’s first job when he was 12 was controlling the manual scoreboard for Baltimore’s NBA team, the bullets that belonged to an uncle. After dropping out of the University of Baltimore, he did sit-ins to incorporate the city’s public tennis courts; directed New Challenge, a left wing magazine in New York; and worked for The Bergen Evening Record in Hackensack, NJ, where he met his future wife, Marilyn Klein, before he was fired for trying to unionise the staff.
In addition to his wife and son Jonathan, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, Mr. Askin, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, leaves behind Daniel from their other son; two grandchildren; and one son, Steve, from a previous marriage that was divorced. One daughter, Andrea, died two years ago.
Mr. Askin only got 96 credits from City College of New York, not enough to get his degree, but he was admitted to Rutgers Law School anyway. In 1966, when he received his law degree, the college also awarded him a bachelor’s degree. At Rutgers, he was a student of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, future Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and later a faculty member.
In 1970 he founded the Constitutional Litigation Clinic to protect civil liberties, but later found that he himself had been monitored by the government.
In 1982, he launched a frustrating campaign for the New Jersey 11th District Democratic nomination against incumbent Joseph G. Minish after “spending the better part of two years and about $ 60,000, up 26 percent.” of votes to win ”. wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times. In 1986 he faced the Republican incumbent Dean Gallo again and was beaten again.
He later received the William Pincus Award, the highest honor awarded by the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Clinical Legal Education, and the Great Teacher Award from the Society of American Law School Teachers. When he retired in 2016, a wing at Rutgers Law School was named after him and his wife.
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