Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 23, 2005|Volume 34, Number 4

Pictured at a Law School panel honoring alumnus Oscar M. Ruebhausen are (from left) Jon O. Newman '56 LL.B., senior judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Frank Iacobucci, former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada; Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh; Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel; and Dieter Grimm, former justice of the Constitutional Court of Germany.

Alumnus Ruebhausen bequeaths
over $30 million to Law School

The Law School has received a gift from the estate of Oscar M. Ruebhausen '37 LL.B. that is expected to provide more than $30 million to the school.

The gift to the Law School is one of the largest in the history of American legal education.

The Law School designated Sept. 21 as Oscar M. Ruebhausen '37 Day, to commemorate the alumnus' gift and his lifelong support of the school.

The day's events recognized the generosity of Ruebhausen and his wife, Zelia P. Ruebhausen. Their gift will serve to support the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professorship of Law, which has been awarded to Roberta Romano, a leading expert in corporate law. The fund will also support Oscar M. Ruebhausen Visiting Fellows; the Zelia P. Ruebhausen Student Fund; and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund.

Ruebhausen was a partner in the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP for almost 50 years, and served as its presiding partner between 1972 and 1981. He was president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, a key adviser to Nelson Rockefeller, general counsel to the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, and chair of the boards of the Russell Sage and Greenwall Foundations. In 1978, he was awarded the Law School's Citation of Merit. He passed away in 2004, 14 years after the death of his wife, Zelia, a 1937 graduate of Vassar College who served on the boards of the League of Women Voters, the International House of New York City and the Africa-America Institute. From 1972 to 1977, she was part of the 12-member commission charged with revising the Charter of New York City.

"Yale Law School could not survive without the generosity of its alumni, few of whom were more dedicated to their alma mater than Oscar M. Ruebhausen," said Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh. "He was the type of lawyer that our students and graduates hope to become. He was a social architect deeply committed to the very best values of the law and the legal profession."

"Through this generous gift," added Koh, "the Ruebhausens sought to enhance the intellectual vitality, creativity and analytic rigor of Yale Law School, while emphasizing the role of the legal profession as an advocate for the public interest. This gift will enable us to continue this proud tradition at Yale Law School, and at the same time help us support the school's close intellectual and social interactions between faculty, students and visiting fellows."

The events on Sept. 21 included a panel discussion and Romano's inaugural lecture as the first Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law.

Koh moderated a panel discussion titled "Nationhood and International Law," which featured the first slate of Oscar M. Ruebhausen Visiting Fellows. The four distinguished jurists, who explored the relationship between international legal norms and domestic law, were Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel; Dieter Grimm, former justice of the Constitutional Court of Germany; Frank Iacobucci, former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada; and Jon O. Newman '56, senior judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In her inaugural lecture as the first Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law, titled "After the Revolution in Corporate Law," Romano discussed the causes of the late 20th-century transformation of corporate law, as well as the effect of this change on corporate practice, corporate regulation and corporate legal scholarship.

Romano is a founder of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law and has written extensively on takeover regulation, state competition for corporate charters, shareholder litigation, institutional investor activism in corporate governance, and the regulation of financial instruments and securities markets. Her books include "The Genius of American Corporate Law" and "The Advantage of Competitive Federalism for Securities Regulation."

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