Staff and faculty focus

Reflecting on the legacy of Justice Hans Linde

Justice Hans Linde, longtime instructor at Willamette Law, left an indelible imprint on the legal community in the state of Oregon. Linde passed away in August 2020. He was 96 years old.

“Oregon lost a giant of the law,” says Professor Norman Williams.

Linde and his family left Nazi Germany in 1933, ultimately settling in Oregon. He attended Lincoln High School and Reed College before graduating law school from U.C. Berkeley. Linde clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and worked for U.S. Senator Richard Neuberger before joining the University of Oregon School of Law, where he taught for nearly 20 years.

In 1977, Linde was appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court, where he served until 1990. Linde then joined Willamette Law, first as a visiting professor, then as a distinguished scholar-in-residence. Linde’s intellectual vigor was felt at every scale, from the beginning to the end of his career. At Willamette, Linde taught an extremely popular state constitutional law seminar, attended by students and numerous junior scholars at the school.

“For those of us who joined the faculty in the 2000s,” says Professor Paul Diller, “Hans left an indelible imprint on our scholarly work, reading drafts of law review articles and offering extraordinarily helpful feedback.”

Diller remembers Linde’s insatiable appetite for intellectual engagement.

“If your office door was open and Hans was walking down the hall, he was likely to engage you for the next hour on a legal issue.”

Jeffrey Dobbins, associate dean for academic affairs, adds, “Those conversations were remarkable, as Hans usually left you with a completely new perspective on a legal topic that you thought you had already considered from all sides.”

Linde is celebrated as one of the most influential state court judges in the country, with numerous law reviews highlighting his path-breaking work on state constitutional interpretation. A 2007 symposium on the occasion of his retirement from teaching was published in Volume 43 of the Willamette Law Review.

Linde was dedicated to improving the law and did so not only through his academic writing, but also in practical ways. He served on the Oregon State Constitutional Revision Commission in the 1960s and helped create the state’s official law reform body, the Oregon Law Commission, which he served on for many years. Even after he retired from teaching, he remained a constant presence in the work of his colleagues at Willamette and throughout the legal community.

Linde and his wife, Helen, were married for more than 75 years, and had two children. Willamette Law celebrates the innumerable intellectual offspring that Linde left behind, in the form of statutes, constitutional provisions, law review articles, books, opinions, legal tests and the many former students, clerks and colleagues who benefited immeasurably from his knowledge, curiosity and skill.

“Hans was a mentor to everyone,” says Professor Laura Appleman, university research integrity officer.

Linde’s positive impact on the Willamette Law community will last for generations.

Justice Hans Linde