Gerald (Jerry) Ellison Frug

Gerald Ellison Frug (Jerry), beloved father, popular teacher and influential scholar of the law of cities died at home on November 7 at the age of 84.

He was born in Berkeley, California on July 31, 1939. He attended Berkeley public schools and received his college education at the University of California at Berkeley. He went to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1963. After law school, he clerked for the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Roger Traynor. He then served as an assistant to the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C., and later health services deputy administrator of the City of New York.

He began teaching law in 1974, first at the University of Pennsylvania and then at Harvard Law School, where he taught for forty years, beginning in 1981; eventually he was named the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard. He also held appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the London School of Economics. He taught the required first-year class on Contracts nearly every year of his teaching career. His legal specialty was local government law, a field of study he has been said to have transformed. In addition to its impact in law, his work has been influential in the areas of design, planning, and urban theory. He was the editor of a casebook, Local Government Law, now in its seventh edition (now co-edited by David Barron, Richard Ford and Michelle Anderson). Among his many scholarly publications are the seminal article "The City as a Legal Concept" and his books City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls and City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation. In addition to his professional work, he was also widely known as a connoisseur and collector of contemporary artistic photography, as well as a classical pianist.

A memorial celebrating his life and work will be held in 2024 at a time to be determined.

He was predeceased by his parents, James Frug and Anne Frug. He was also predeceased by his wife, Mary Joe Frug, in 1991; after her death he arranged for the publication of her collected scholarly work in the volume Postmodern Legal Feminism. He is survived by his children, Emily Frug Klineman and Stephen Frug, his son and daughter-in-law, Jeffrey Klineman and Sara Saperstein Frug, and his grandchildren Charlie, Jake and Joseph. He is also survived by his brother, Ron Frug, his sister-in-law Sharon Frug, and many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Greater Boston Food Bank.