Columbia Law reports that Barbara Aronstein Black died yesterday. She was president of the American Society for Legal History in 1985-1989, when I joined the scholarly discipline of legal history. She was so gracious to a new entrant and so wise and wryly intelligent that I knew at once that I wanted to be a member of any club that would have her for its leader.
Here is Dean Daniel Abebe's letter to Columbia Law's faculty and staff.
I write to share the deeply sorrowful news that Barbara Aronstein Black—graduate of the Class of 1955, longtime member of our faculty, and the first woman to serve as Columbia Law dean—passed away yesterday at the age of 92.
Barbara A. Black (CLS)
Barbara was born and raised in Brooklyn, attended New York City public schools, and, at the young age of 16, enrolled at Brooklyn College. She decided to attend Columbia Law School at the suggestion of one of her undergraduate professors—eschewing earlier plans to go to Brooklyn Law School like her father and brothers. Despite being one of only a handful of women in her law school class, Barbara quickly flourished at Columbia. “It was in the Columbia Law School that I suddenly woke to the fact that serious intellectual endeavor was right for me, was what I wanted to do, was what I felt myself capable of doing,” she said during an interview in 2006. She also met her future husband of nearly 50 years, Professor Charles L. Black Jr., at Columbia Law School.
After a hiatus from academia spent raising her three children, Barbara began a graduate program at Yale University. She earned a Ph.D. in history in 1975 and joined the Yale faculty as a professor of history the following year. As a scholar, Barbara’s research was at the intersection of law and Anglo-American history, and one of her earliest publications, “The Constitution of Empire: The Case for the Colonists,” (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1976) earned broad acclaim among the legal academy.
Barbara accepted a tenured faculty position as the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School in 1984, relishing the chance to return to her native city. Just two years later, Barbara assumed the deanship, making national news as the first woman to helm an Ivy League law school. During her five-year tenure, Barbara advanced curricular reform, recruited several renowned corporate law scholars to the Law School faculty, and addressed persistent issues with the physical plant. She also was instrumental in launching initiatives on race and gender studies and introduced flexible options for students and employees who were mothers.
Along the way, Barbara faced obstacles that were all too typical for women of her generation. She described “the essential maleness of the law school culture” she experienced as a student and academic fellow. It was all the more meaningful, then, that Barbara chose to accept the Columbia Law School deanship—a decision she hoped would send a message to other women struggling to succeed in the male-dominated legal academy.
Barbara retired from teaching in 2008 but continued to remain active both at Columbia Law School and in the legal academy writ large. She was a fixture at Law School events like the annual Stone Circle Luncheon, which brings together alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago. Barbara lived close to campus for many years and only recently relocated to Philadelphia to be near her daughter—a move that was, she wrote to me on January 9, “turning out very well.”
It is impossible for me to characterize the depth of Barbara Black’s impact on, and affection for, Columbia Law School. She was a singular figure in our history, someone who truly accelerated the transformation of this institution and left an indelible legacy—including a beautiful portrait and a professorship named in her honor—that will no doubt endure well into the future.
Please join me in expressing sincere condolences to Barbara’s family, including her three children: David, Gavin, and Robin. We will post a full tribute on the Law School’s website in the coming days and hope to gather to celebrate Barbara’s life in due course.
--Dan Ernst
