Barbara Aronstein Black, first woman dean of an Ivy League law school, dies at 92

Barbara Aronstein Black, a legal historian who became the first woman to lead an Ivy League law school as dean of Columbia Law School, died on Tuesday in Philadelphia at 92. Her death was confirmed by Kara D.V. Avanceña, a spokeswoman for Columbia Law School. Ms. Black served as Columbia Law dean from 1986 to 1991.

During her tenure she influenced curricular reform, bolstered the school’s corporate law program, sought to soften Columbia’s reputation for competitiveness, brought more women and people of color onto the faculty, adopted a maternal leave policy and introduced a part-time program for mothers.

It would be 17 years before another woman, the future Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan, became dean of Harvard Law School. She described a “circuitous path” to the deanship: after completing a law degree and a teaching fellowship at Columbia in 1956 she left academia to raise three children and care for her ailing mother in New Haven while her husband, the constitutional law scholar Charles L.

Black Jr., taught at Yale. She completed a Ph.D. in history at Yale in 1975, took a professorial post at Yale in 1976, joined Columbia’s faculty as the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History in 1984 and accepted the deanship less than two years later.

Key Topics

Culture, Barbara Aronstein Black, Columbia Law School, Elena Kagan, Yale Law School, New Haven