Photo by Debra Tenney
Now semi-retired after a colorful and varied career, Marvin H. Gladstone - the Green Party candidate for "position 3" on the New Mexico Court of Appeals - has long been a powerful advocate of a strong and independent judiciary, and of the choice afforded by a true multiparty ballot. He is an opponent of the death penalty, of mandatory minimum sentencing and of "three strikes you're out" legislation; and a strong advocate of judicial and penal reform.
BEST QUALIFIED
A U.S. Army veteran (WW II Victory Medal; Army of Occupation [Korea] Medal), Mr. Gladstone completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan on the GI Bill following his honorable discharge in 1947. He worked on auto assembly lines and as a truck dispatcher in the years between college and law school, was awarded a full scholarship to Rutgers Law School in 1957 working full-time nights while supporting a family of four, served on the editorial board of, and as a contributor to, the Rutgers Law Review, and graduated cum laude in 1960.
After serving a prestigious clerkship with the then-senior and presiding judge of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey he was admitted to the New Jersey Bar and thereafter to practice before the New York and New Mexico courts, the federal courts sitting in those states, the United States Supreme Court, the U.S. Tax Court and, pro haec vice, tribunals in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., California, and abroad.
His decades-long active trial and appellate practice took him to countries around the world. An expansive and varied representational history included such clients as the New Jersey General Assembly appearing before the Supreme Court of that state in its historic one-man-one-vote case and numerous other public bodies as well as institutional and individual clients both as trial and as appellate counsel.
Among his other credentials Mr. Gladstone taught civil practice and procedure, including appellate practice, for thirteen years as a member of the adjunct faculty of New York Law School, attaining the rank of full professor while maintaining a full case load; sat regularly for many years as a judge of his alma mater's Mock Trial and Appellate Moot Court competitions; was invited to attend a criminal trial in Beijing (believed to have been the only American lawyer ever to have received such an invitation), etc.
The scope of his nearly forty-year practice encompasses - possibly uniquely among those presently contesting for a seat on New Mexico's Court of Appeals - the civil, administrative, criminal and maritime law, both trial and appellate.
Mr. Gladstone's now-twelve-year attachment to New Mexico induced him to anticipate a retirement here by acquiring properties in Corrales and Albuquerque, making long and frequent commutes while gradualizing-out his active practice back east, then permanently relocating and gaining admission to the New Mexico bar.
Since permanently relocating to his adoptive state he has actively involved himself in third-party politics in keeping with his view that the American voter is entitled to a choice other than the Tweedledum-Tweedledee typically offered by the entrenched two-party electoral monopoly. Mr. Gladstone formerly served as an officer of the Green Party of New Mexico.
Five of his seven grandchildren, two of them native New Mexicans, live here with their parents and attend public schools in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. His wife Patti is an actively-practicing accountant, an artist, a founding member of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and an active fellow Green.
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