Monday, August 20, 2001
Page 3
Epstein to Get Award He Originated to Honor Witkin
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Court of Appeal Justice Norman L. Epstein, creator of the Witkin Medal Award in 1993, was named Friday as the medal’s latest recipient.
The State Bar of California announced that Epstein would be presented the award next month at the organization’s annual meeting in Anaheim to honor him for his extensive writing and scholarship on California law. Among his other accomplishments, Epstein became a co-author with the late Bernard E. Witkin on one of Witkin’s well-known treatises on California law and procedure.
“I hope I’m not getting the award simply because I came up with the idea,” Epstein said.
Witkin himself was the first recipient of the award that Epstein created to recognize attorneys, judges and legal scholars whose lifetime body of work has altered the legal landscape. The scholar died in 1995 at age 91.
Epstein began his work on Witkin’s “California Criminal Law” in 1980.
He is a 1955 graduate of UCLA and earned his law degree at the same university in 1958. After graduation, he joined the office of then-Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Sr.
He later became general counsel to the state university system when Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1975. Gov. Jerry Brown elevated him to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1980, and Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to this district’s Div. Four in 1990.
California Chief Justice Ronald George will present the medal at a reception Sept. 7.
Copyright 2001, Metropolitan News Company