Barbara Aronstein Black, dean emerita of Columbia Law School, passed away on January 20. She was 92 years old.
A native of Brooklyn, Dr. Black attended Brooklyn College and received her law degree from Columbia Law School, where she was one of a small cohort of women in her graduating class. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1975.
After several years teaching history at Yale, Dr. Black returned to Columbia Law School in 1984 as the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History. Two years later, she was named dean, making her the first woman to serve as dean of an Ivy League law school. During her tenure, she bolstered the school’s corporate law faculty, led curricular reforms, enhanced the school’s maternity leave policy, and introduced a part-time program for entering students who were also mothers. She ended her deanship in 1991, but continued to teach until her retirement in 2008.
As a scholar, Dr. Black studied the intersection of law and Anglo-American history. She had two stints as president of the American Society of Legal History and was a member of the New York State Ethics Commission. Throughout her career, Dr. Black received numerous honors and awards, including honorary doctorates from Brooklyn College, New York Law School, Smith College, and the Georgetown University Law Center.