Leon Letwin, a UCLA law professor and social justice activist who championed the rights of Angela Davis, among others, and advocated to increase enrollment of blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles-area law schools, died July 13 in State College, Pennsylvania following a long illness. He was 85.
An expert on evidence law, Letwin joined the law faculty at UCLA in 1964 and became the founding director of the Legal Education Opportunity Program of Southern California, an organization that aimed to prepare minority students for law school. He took on a number of controversial legal battles to defend the rights of those holding "radical" or "divergent" views.
He retired from UCLA in 1994.
To learn more about Letwin's life, see his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.
