Aviam Soifer – 50th Reunion Essay

Aviam Soifer

1589 Alencastre St.

Honolulu, HI 96816

soifer@hawaii.edu

808-295-3488

Spouse(s): Marlene Joan Booth (1969)

Child(ren): Raphael Moshe Booth Soifer (1981) ,Mira Shulamit Booth Soifer (1985)

Education: Yale College, BA, 1969; Yale City Planning Department, Master’s of Urban Studies, 1972; Yale Law School, JD, 1972

National Service:

Career: Law clerk, Federal District Court Judge Jon O. Newman, 1972–1973; law teacher, University of Connecticut, 1973-79; Boston University School of Law, 1979–1993; Dean, Boston College Law School, 1993-98; Dean, W.S. Richardson School of Law, 2003–present

Avocations: Boston Red Sox; running

College: Trumbull

I remain quite skeptical about progress. Nonetheless, I remain committed to its importance, whether in small increments or through unanticipated major changes. As the late Charles Black liked to say, “The pursuit of justice is like going east. You never get there, but the journey matters.” Though my skepticism has been reinforced by recent events in our country, I remain aware of my personal good fortune in terms of health, family, and work. Marlene Booth and I have been married since the summer after our graduation and we are blessed to have two healthy and generally happy children.

Raphael Moshe Booth Soifer was born on the Fourth of July 1981 and Amira Shulamit Booth-Soifer followed on May 5, 1985, which was Karl Marx’s birthday. Raphi graduated from Yale College in 2004 and has gone on to live in Brazil over the past decade, where he has been a street performer, protester, and, most recently, a newly minted PhD at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in urban and regional studies. Amira graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2008 and earned a master’s degree in the teaching of English from Columbia Teachers College, and is now teaching at Garden School in Jackson Heights, Queens.

After I graduated from Yale Law School in 1972, and received a master’s degree in urban studies, I was fortunate to clerk for then-Federal District Court Judge Jon O. Newman in New Haven, followed by beginning my teaching career at the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1973. I received a fellowship at Harvard in 1976–77, and began teaching at Boston University in 1979, motivated in part by the fact that Marlene—who received an MFA from Yale in film in 1975—had settled in to a career of making documentaries at WGBH and then as an independent filmmaker in Boston.

With little administrative experience, unless you count Co-Ed Week, I was lucky to be dean of Boston College Law School from 1993–1998, followed by a sabbatical at the University of Hawai’i from 1999–2000. Marlene and I fell in love with Hawai’i and flew our empty nest when I was offered the deanship at the Richardson Law School at the University of Hawai’i in 2003. The deanship continues and we both feel very lucky to be living in this beautiful, complex, and strikingly diverse place. Marlene continues to make documentaries, now focusing on Hawai’i, and to teach undergraduates in the University’s Academy of Creative Media. And I continue to teach and write primarily about constitutional law and American legal history.

It is hard to be optimistic right now. Nonetheless, the radical changes in such realms as the rights of women and of those who identify as LGBT+ demonstrate the importance of diverse communities, and can give one hope. And friendship and laughter remain vital. The startling transformation of Yale College—and in many of us—underscores that even when change may seem like a pendulum, a pendulum never swings exactly the same way twice.