Law School Mourns the Passing of Former Dean Carl Auerbach
Carl Auerbach, who served as dean of the Law School from 1972-79 and was the driving force behind the building of Mondale Hall, passed away on April 6 in La Jolla, Calif., after a short illness. He was 100 years old.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1915, Auerbach attended Long Island University, majoring in history and economics and graduating in 1935 at the age of 19. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1938, he became an associate in a Washington, D.C., law firm, but left after just two months to take a position in the U.S. Department of Labor. During World War II he was drafted into the Army and served with the Office of Strategic Services in London and, later, the Allied Control Council in Berlin. In 1947, he took a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he established himself as a leading scholar of constitutional and administrative law and became active in Democratic politics and in Americans for Democratic Action, of which he was a founder.
In 1961, Auerbach became a professor at the Law School (his Harvard Law School classmate, William Lockhart, was dean at the time) and continued his wide-ranging legal scholarship as well as his writings on political topics. Mondale Hall, dedicated April 4, 1978, was an enormous project whose planning, legislative maneuvering, fundraising, and construction consumed much of Auerbach’s deanship. After leaving the Law School, he moved on to teach law at the University of San Diego and Northwestern School of Law. A major theme of his teaching and scholarship throughout his career was the need for a closer relationship between law and the social sciences.
In its obituary, the Minneapolis Star Tribune describes Auerbach as “a confidant of Hubert Humphrey, friend of Walter Mondale, brief boss of Richard Nixon, and a key player in the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.” The story notes Mondale’s (’56) appraisal of Auerbach as one of “the most important figures in the development” of the Law School and quotes Professor Robert Stein (’61) on his legacy: “He believed very much in the ability of the law to improve human life.”
