With heavy hearts and immense appreciation for his contributions to the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, the LSU Law family is remembering the passion, wisdom, and warmth of Professor Emeritus Paul Baier following his passing on Friday, Feb. 18, at the age of 78.
“Paul’s passion for the law and legal education was second to none,” said LSU Law Interim Dean Lee Ann Wheelis Lockridge. “He adored being in the classroom with his students, and moreover couldn’t immerse himself deeply enough in Constitutional law and legal history, particularly of Supreme Court justices. Something more was always to be learned and shared. We have missed having him with us here at the Law Center since his retirement, and we will miss him all the more now.”
Baier taught for 47 years at LSU Law before his retirement in January 2020, and LSU subsequently named him Professor Emeritus to honor his distinguished career. During his nearly five decades at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Baier established himself as an expert in constitutional law, civil rights litigation, and appellate advocacy. Along the way, he touched the lives and influenced the careers of countless students. He also taught and inspired his colleagues.
“Paul had an enormous influence on my approach to and style of teaching—more, probably, than any other colleague,” said Professor John Devlin, who joined the LSU Law faculty in 1986 with little classroom experience and began sitting in on his colleagues’ classes to observe how they interacted with students. “Of all these, Paul’s were the classes I visited the most often, and from Paul I learned the most important lesson of all: That a teacher can and should do anything necessary to convey the message and to make sure that the students will remember it.”
Baier played oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court long before they became widely available, Devlin said. He also used props and visual aids, and he regularly invited lawyers and others who had personal experience into his classroom to share their experiences with his students.
“Nothing was off limits if it helped convey the message and make it memorable,” Devlin said. “My favorite memory is a class that revolved around a point of Roman law and history. He came to class in a toga and taught the whole class in it. For a young teacher, that was a revelation. Formality be damned. Do what works.”
Professor Bill Corbett likewise described Baier as a consummate law professor who “loved the law and led an exhilarating life studying, teaching, writing about, and celebrating law in a way that I wish I could emulate.” Corbett met Baier in the spring of 1992, during his second semester as part of the LSU Law faculty. When Baier served as guest lecturer of one of his Labor Law classes, Corbett was immediately struck by his command of the classroom as well as his passion for the subject matter.
“As he taught, I sat back and marveled at how much he enjoyed teaching a subject that he had not studied in many years—and he got most of it right!” Corbett recalled. “Paul loved the law in a way that I am not sure I have seen in another person. That love was infectious, and a multitude of students learned to love law because of him. I miss him.”
In late 2019, as he was preparing to teach his final class, Baier reflected on his life and career in a wide-ranging interview with LSU Law. On his childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, Baier recalled having been more interested in his Boy Scout lessons than he was in schoolwork. But that began to change when he started attending Walnut Hills High School, a premiere public college-prep school in Cincinnati.
“That changed my life because at Walnut Hills I began pursuing academics,” he recalled, “and I discovered I was actually quite good at it.”
It was also at Walnut Hills that Baier was introduced to the plays of William Shakespeare, which he described as having “a profound effect on me.” After high school, Baier attended the University of Cincinnati, where he majored in economics and excelled at his studies, graduating with a 4.0 GPA (summa cum laude) in 1966. Although he had applied to the University of Michigan, where he planned to continue his economics studies, he also applied to Harvard Law School, “and when I got accepted there was no question what I was going to do.”
In 1969, Baier earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he served as editor of the Harvard Legal Commentary. He came to LSU Law in 1972 after teaching at University of Michigan Law School and University of Tennessee College of Law.
During his tenure at LSU Law, Baier served as a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975-76 and as Executive Director of the Louisiana Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution from 1987-1991. In 1989, he was invited to become the first Scholar-in-Residence of the Louisiana Bar Foundation, and he also served as a Special Assistant State Attorney General in several U.S. Supreme Court and 5th Circuit cases, including the Louisiana Higher Education Desegregation Case. He was a Board member and Secretary of the Louisiana Supreme Court Historical Society for 17 years.
Baier taught summer programs in France and Italy with Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Justice Antonin Scalia. Among his many academic works, he edited the memoirs of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (“Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black”) as well as “Lions Under the Throne: The Edward Douglass White Lectures of Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist.” His other scholarly works included “Speeches,” a publication of his speeches covering over 30 years of his career, as well as “What Is the Use of a Law Book Without Pictures or Conversations” and “The Pocket Constitutionalist.” In 2020, he published the capstone of his career, “Written in Water: An experiment in Legal Biography,” which chronicled the life and career of Colonel Frederick Bernays Wiener.
Baier’s love of Shakespeare and his flair for theatrics was reflected in “Father Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White and the Constitution,” a play that he wrote, produced, and directed. It premiered in 1997 in Thibodaux, where White was born, and it was subsequently performed at Louisiana’s Old State Capitol, the Louisiana Supreme Court and, in 2011, in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Law Library of Congress. A year later, four members of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court joined Baier on stage in a production in the Social Law Library at the John Adams Courthouse in Boston.
“As a teacher and an academic, it is my proudest achievement,” Baier said of the play and his many performances of it.
Among the many accolades and awards bestowed upon him, the Louisiana Bar Foundation named Baier its Distinguished Professor in 2004 and the senior class of LSU Law in 2010 voted him Law Professor of the Year. The Tiger Athletic Foundation honored him in 2007 and 2011 with its prestigious TAF Undergraduate Teaching Award for his teaching in the LSU Honors College.
Baier is survived by his wife, Barbara Gelpi Baier, three children, two stepchildren, and numerous grandchildren. Visitation will be held on Sunday, March 6, from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the LSU Faculty Club, 101 Tower Dr., with funeral services to follow.
