Louis Boudin

Born Louis Boudinoff in Ukraine to Frome (Feld) and Peter Boudinoff, a middle-class garment trader. Around 1880, he emigrated to the United States, later joined by family, who all shortened their name to Boudin. Louis graduated from New York University law school in 1896, obtaining his LLM in 1897, and married Leah Kanefsky in 1899. Boudin was a frequent contributor to the Yiddish press and an active member of the American Socialist movement. His first book, The Theoretical System of Karl Marx in the Light of Recent Criticism is a compilation of articles he had originally penned in the International Socialist Review. After the Bolshevik Revolution and the commensurate changes in American Socialism, Boudin became less engaged in politics, focusing his attention on his labor law practice. Boudin’s cases established many pro-union and antitrust precedents in New York and federal law.