Michael L. Golden, Jr. – 50th Reunion Essay

Michael L. Golden, Jr.

661 South Highland Avenue

Merion Station, PA 19066

goldenm@gyglaw.com

215-694-1241

Spouse(s): Shelley Z. Green (1980)

Child(ren): Jonathan Z. Golden (1986) and M. Leslie Golden III (1988)

Education: Yale College BA 1969 and Yale Law School JD 1972

Career: Assistant Attorney General of Pa 2 years, Clinical Supervisor Univ. of Pa. Law School 2 years; Partner Gould Yaffe and Golden 42 years

College: Saybrook

Shelley Green and I have been happily married since 1980, and are proud parents of Jonathan (Wesleyan 2008) and M. Leslie MD (Saybrook 2010).

My partner, Roy Yaffe, and I have practiced law together for more than 40 years. I began practicing at the Pennsylvania Department of Justice. Although except for jury duty I have not been in a courtroom this century, I did enjoy some early litigation success. I coauthored the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s United States Supreme Court Amicus brief in the Pittsburgh Press case, striking down sex-segregated help-wanted advertising and represented the Commonwealth in litigation successfully increasing minority representation in the Philadelphia uniformed municipal services. I also successfully represented the first woman to be awarded tenure as a college professor in a Title VII sex discrimination case.

I have served on and chaired the boards of several local nonprofit organizations. I am particularly proud of my six years of service as chair of the Lower Merion Library System, during which a public/private partnership successfully funded the expansion and improvement of all six public libraries in our town.

As I look back on the years since we arrived in New Haven in 1965, I marvel at how much has changed. The advances in technology and the ways we communicate today are extraordinary. What would we have said in the ’60s and early ’70s if we were required to buy a device that would permit the government to monitor our location and record our conversations?

But I digress. The greatest change may be in the way people view the world today. Many ideas that were axiomatic 50 years ago are now questioned. Although history is replete with advances, changes in knowledge, and pendulum swings in philosophy, the death of empiricism is shocking. It frightens me so many people in the United States do not believe in evolution or that human activity affects the climate, or in the efficacy of vaccines.

Finally, as I thought about returning to Yale for our 50th reunion, I was appalled to read how many people question the positive impact of higher education in our country. As the grandson of four immigrant grandparents, access to higher education helped make me and everyone else in my family the responsible contributing citizen she or he is today.