Frederick F. Schauer ’67

Frederick F. Schauer ’67 died from renal failure on September 1, 2024, at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fred came to the College from Englewood, New Jersey, majored in government, was active in the camera club and DOC, and was a brother of Phi Tau. He received an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1968 and a law degree from Harvard in 1972. After three years practicing law in Boston, Fred became an academic, teaching law at West Virginia University, College of William & Mary, University of Michigan, Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Law School. After retiring from Harvard in 2008, Fred became the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia (UVA). During the course of his life Fred wrote more than 300 works on constitutional law and theory, freedom of speech and press, legal reasoning, and the philosophy of law; was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a founding editor of the journal Legal Theory; and received a Guggenheim fellowship. He was considered a foremost scholar in jurisprudence and freedom of expression whose work in the areas of free speech, evidence, rules, and the nature of law will continue to have a major impact on legal thought. In 2010 he married Barbara Spellman, UVA law and psychology professor, who survives.