Barbara Aldave: A legal legacy

On Monday, April 29, Professor Barbara Bader Aldave taught her last class at Oregon Law.

From her start as a half-time professor in 1970, Aldave has educated current and future lawyers and leaders, supported the work of Oregon's entrepreneurs and championed the cause of justice. 

Former dean Eugene Scoles hired Aldave after the law school had begun to admit a significant number of women, as he wanted this new diversity to be reflected in the faculty. Now, more than forty years later, Aldave, the Loran L. Stewart Professor of Business Law and director of the school's Center for Law and Entrepreneurship, will begin the next chapter of a life spent serving others.

In 2002, Aldave founded The Portia Project, an Oregon non-profit corporation that provides legal assistance to women in prison, with a special emphasis on helping them remain connected with their children both during their incarceration and following their release. Additionally, Aldave is a member of numerous social justice organizations, including Amnesty International, Bread For the World, the Gray Panthers and the National Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty. In 2009, the University of Oregon Law School Alumni Association honored Aldave with the Frohnmayer Award for Public Service, which recognizes a graduate, faculty member or friend of Oregon Law whose public service brings honor to the school.

Prior to entering academia, Aldave earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Stanford University in 1960 and her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966. She graduated from law school in the top one percent of her class.

During her first quarter at Oregon Law, Aldave taught Partnerships and Corporations, and during the second she taught Commercial Paper. When she was asked to teach Securities Regulation during her third quarter, she agreed to do so even though she had never studied the subject herself. To prepare for the spring term, she read through all 12 volumes of “The Fundamental of Securities Regulation,” a treatise written by an esteemed Harvard professor, the late Louis Loss. She was given the Outstanding Teacher Award by the Oregon Law chapter of Phi Delta Phi Legal Fraternity in 1971 – and again in both 1972 and 1973.

In 1989, Aldave became the dean of St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, where she served for nearly ten years. During her tenure as dean, the school established seven legal clinics and won a national award from the American Bar Association for its commitment to preparing its students for public-interest careers.

When Aldave returned to Oregon Law in 2000, she began to build a strong professional relationship with the late Carolyn Chambers, a UO College of Business graduate who founded several Eugene-based companies and generously supported numerous UO programs. Chambers was impressed by Aldave’s professional accomplishments and her extensive experience as an expert witness in business litigation, and proposed that Aldave help her spearhead the expansion of the Center for Law and Entrepreneurship as its director, a position Aldave has occupied since her return to Oregon Law in 2000. 

Since 2000, Aldave has taught Nonprofit Organizations, Business Associations, Securities Regulations, Accounting for Lawyers, and Women in Prison – the last of which gives students the opportunity to work directly with women who are or have been incarcerated at Oregon’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.

- from the UO School of Law