Lourdes Rosado '85 Named Citizen of the Year
By Philadelphia Inquirer

by Michael Lott
1/5/2010

Lourdes Rosado '85 and her colleague Marsha Levick have been named Citizens of the Year by the Philadelphia Inquirer for their juvenile justice legal work. Rosado and Levick, attorneys at the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, led the effort to have the convictions of approximately 6,500 juveniles vacated after it was alleged that two Luzerne County, Pa. judges had received over $1.3 million each in kickbacks from a privately run juvenile detention center.

The attorneys had noticed both a high percentage of juveniles appearing in court without counsel and unusually harsh sentences for minor offenses in Luzerne County. While working to have individual youth freed from detention, they petitioned the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court to intervene. Only after federal authorities filed charges against the two judges did the court eventually agree and throw out the convictions, calling it a "travesty of justice."

Rosado, a Lang Opportunity Scholar who majored in political science and minored in economics at Swarthmore, earned her law degree at New York University and joined the Juvenile Law Center in 1998. The Inquirer's Citizen of the Year award honors "people whose work has upheld the ideals of citizenship - promoting justice, strengthening democracy, or fostering community."