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Eleanor Swift

1945 - 2023

Eleanor Swift obituary, 1945-2023, Lafayette, CA

BORN

1945

DIED

2023

Eleanor Swift Obituary

Eleanor Swift
October 16, 1945 - September 20, 2023
Eleanor Bowne Swift, Professor of Law and celebrated teacher at the University of California School of Law, Berkeley, died on September 20. She was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, where her father was a curator at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. She graduated from the University's Laboratory School as president of the Student Council; from Radcliffe College summa cum laude; and from Yale Law School as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She clerked for Judge Joseph Blumenfeld on the U.S. District Court in Connecticut and for Judge David Bazelon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and practiced law at Vinson & Elkins in Houston for five years.
With her 8-year-old son from her first marriage, she came to the Law School at Berkeley in 1979 to teach Evidence and Civil Procedure. In her eighth year of teaching, in 1987, she was denied tenure by the Law faculty. She filed a sex discrimination grievance, which resulted in a landmark settlement, under which a committee of outside professors would compare her file with those of the six men who received tenure during the relevant period. The committee found Eleanor's work met the standard applied to the men, and the University awarded her tenure in 1989. Gracious, forgiving and resilient, she returned to the Law School, where she flourished for the next 25 years.
Eleanor was the leader in establishing the School's now-booming clinical education program. She served a term as Associate Dean. She was awarded the School's and the University's distinguished teaching awards and lifetime achievement awards by the Law School Alumni Association and the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools. She was thoroughly unassuming about these honors. She was a co-author of an Evidence casebook and of McCormick's Treatise on Evidence. She published mainly in the field of Evidence, especially on hearsay law. But what most defined her career were her dedication to the clinical program and social justice, her teaching, her inspiration of women students, her counseling of other women who had been denied tenure, and her mentoring of junior women colleagues.
Eleanor had the career she wanted. She retired in 2014. Having become President of the Women's Faculty Club three years earlier, she devoted herself to the Club for the next eight years, among other things, leading its successful capital campaign to raise over a million dollars for its next century.
Eleanor was elegant, vibrant, and happy. She was universally admired for her calm good judgment and wisdom, compassion and engagement, and determination and courage. She had an extraordinarily rich and loving personal life. Shortly after she arrived in Berkeley, she met her future husband, Robert Cole, a professor at the Law School, and they quickly became inseparable, the start of their remarkable forty-four years together, shared lovingly by their children and, later, their grandchildren. Along with her husband and her son, Ben Glass, she is survived by her daughter-in-law, Noa Levy and baby granddaughter Ella; stepson Adam Cole; stepdaughter Felicia Cole, her husband Dean Amundson and their daughters Abby and Talia Cole; and stepdaughter Sarah Cole, her husband Martin Vogelbaum and their children Freddie and Anna Vogelbaum. A memorial service will be planned for the School of Law. Donations may be made to the Women's Faculty Club at womensfacultyclub.com/donate.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by San Francisco Chronicle on Sep. 29, 2023.

Memories and Condolences
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6 Entries

Stephen Rosenbaum

May 21, 2024

My deep condolences to Robert Cole (my favorite evidence prof) and family. The remarks I made at the time I received the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service in 2013 capture my memories of Eleanor:

"I am honored to accept an award named for Professor Swift. Eleanor is not just Swift. She's tenacious, but not loquacious. Gracious--not ostentatious. Whether fighting sexism in faculty hiring, jump starting the Boalt clinical program, co-founding the Henderson Centrr for Social Justice or safeguarding Cal students' due process rights. And speaking of naming, some of you may know that I was recently given the title John & Elizabeth *Boalt* Lecturer for my 20-plus years of teaching. I was a bit dubious about a designation with the name *Boalt* in it. I mean references to "Boalt" have been all but banished as the result of a branding initiative some 5 years ago [and formal 'cancellation' since then], aside from some exceptions set out by the Dean--see supra Memo of April 24, 2008. I trust the same fate does not await the name Swift. It is a brand worth keeping."

Chuck Reich

December 21, 2023

Remembering with fondness and gratitude, her kindness and understanding when we were highschool classmates.

charlotte fishman

November 2, 2023

Eleanor Swift was a class act. I had the privilege of serving as co-counsel in her battle for tenure battle at UC, and I feel honored to have participated in her fight to obtain the tenured status that she richly deserved. May she rest in peace.

Jessica Wolf

October 16, 2023

A dear, special and unforgettable friend. Heartfelt condolences to all the family.

Ellen Cole

October 11, 2023

In loving memory of a wonderful person. We will love you and miss you always.

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