Yale Kamisar, a legal scholar whose work on civil liberties and criminal procedure had a profound influence on landmark Supreme Court decisions, died on Jan. 30 at his home in Ann Arbor MI. He was 92.

Professor Kamisar began to wrestle with the issues of criminal procedure in the late 1950s. Within a decade, he had established himself as the leading figure in an area of the law that, thanks in large part to his work, seemed not just important but intellectually vibrant.

His work was first cited by the Supreme Court in its 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to legal counsel in criminal cases. It was the first of more than 30 decisions over the next half century to cite Professor Kamisar’s work.

His greatest impact on the court came in 1966 in its decision in Miranda v. Arizona that criminal defendants had to be informed of their rights before being questioned, especially their rights to remain silent and to legal counsel. That year, Time magazine called him “…the most overpowering criminal-law scholar in the U.S.” Others called him the “Father of Miranda.”

Arnie Kantrowitz, a literature professor and author who was an early champion of gay rights and a campaigner for fairer treatment of gay people by the media, died Jan. 21 at a rehabilitation center in Manhattan. He was 81.

In 1970, Mr. Kantrowitz became vice president of the Gay Activist’s Alliance. In 1985, he was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD).

When he was teaching, gay students would share questions with him about their sexuality —cautiously, he said, but with a candor he had never felt comfortable with when he was a college student.

Jon Zazula, who with his wife, Marsha, founded Megaforce Records and was an important figure in the emergence of heavy metal music, giving Metallica, Anthrax and other bands their start, died on Feb. 1 at his home in Clermont, FL. He was 69.

Metallica memorialized Mr. Zazula on its Twitter feed. “In 1982, when no one wanted to take a chance on four kids from California playing a crazy brand of metal, Jonny and Marsha did,” the band said. At some point, someone brought them a demo tape by an unknown West Coast band, Metallica. The Zazulas liked what they heard.

Heavy metal was just beginning to take hold in the U.S. when the Zazulas became involved, and it was sometimes dismissed as mere noise. But in a 1983 interview with The Courier-News of Bridgewater, NJ, Mr. Zazula explained the attraction. “It’s music that’s pure emotion,” he said. “Heavy metal is super-talent at breakneck speed.”

Sigal Barsade, whose studies of organizational culture charted the internal dynamics of the American workplace, and who advised countless companies on how to embrace and nurture their employees’ emotional well-being, died on Feb. 6 at her home in Wynnewood, PA. She was 56.

Dr. Barsade, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was a pioneer in what organizational psychologists call the affective revolution: the study of how emotions, not just behavior and decision-making, shape a workplace culture and, in turn, how they affect an organization’s performance.

“One thing we now know…is that emotions are not noise — rather they are data. They reveal not just how people feel, but also what they think and how they will behave,” she told MIT Sloan Management Review in 2020.”

Rabbi Simcha Krauss, who in the face of harsh attacks from colleagues headed a New York-based  rabbinical court that has helped scores of Orthodox women obtain Jewish divorces from recalcitrant husbands, died on Jan. 20 in Jerusalem. He was 84.

As a pulpit rabbi in Queens in the late 1990s, he was among the first rabbis to permit women to have separate Sabbath services so that they could read from the Torah, a privilege that strict Orthodox practice reserves for men during public worship. Then he caused a stir in 2014 when he agreed to lead a newly formed rabbinical court, the International Beit Din, in Riverdale. The court became known for searching out technical flaws, loopholes and acts of deception in order to void marriages when the husband refused to grant a bill of religious divorce, known as a get.

“When you’re older, you’re less afraid, so you do what you believe in,” his son, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, recalled him saying. “So that’s what he did. He let them talk, and he did his work.”

Ivan Reitman, who as producer, director or both was a force behind some of the most successful and beloved film comedies of the last 45 years, including “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Stripes,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Twins, died on Feb. 12 at his home in Montecito, CA. He was 75.

Mr. Reitman made his mark with movies that often featured memorably outrageous scenes and unexpected casting. Critics sometimes complained that his films could seem too loosely structured and acted, something often attributed to his casting of comedy improv actors. But those who worked with him said there was method behind the onscreen madness he orchestrated.

Kathryn Kates, who appeared as a counterwoman in two memorable scenes from “Seinfeld” involving baked goods in short supply — chocolate babkas land marble rye bread — and racked up numerous screen credits over nearly 50 years in the business, died on Jan. 22, in her brother’s home in Lake Worth, FL. She was 73.

The actress, who grew up in Great Neck on Long Island, appeared in “Shades of Blue,” “Friends From College,” “The Good Fight,” “Law and Order,” “Orange is the New Black,” and “The Many Saints of Newark.” But it was in the two episodes of “Seinfeld” that she made her mark, offering a New York attitude for which she was recognized on Manhattan’s streets for decades.