Jaffe, Louis Leventhal, 1905-1996

Louis L. Jaffe was born in Seattle in 1905, and spent much of his youth in San Francisco. He graduated from John Hopkins University in 1924 at the age of 19, and then entered into the Class of 1928 at Harvard Law School. As a law student he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review and ranked third in his graduating class. After he graduated, he became a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, where he worked for three years. After completing his clerkship, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the workforce during the height of the Great Depression. He went on to complete an S.J.D. degree at Harvard Law School in 1932, and two years later he became an attorney with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration—an agency of the New Deal. In 1935, he left to join the National Labor Relations Board as an attorney. In 1936 Jaffe became a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law, where he went on to become Dean in 1948. Jaffe joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1950, and fifteen years later he published Judicial Control of Administrative Action. His work on judicial review was widely commended and cited by other scholars and judges. He also co-authored a casebook, Administrative Law: Cases and Materials, which became a standard text for law students all over the country. Throughout his career he served as a commentator and expert adviser on issues such as regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communication Commission, and the Federal Aviation Commission. Professor Jaffe retired in 1976, and spent the next 20 years residing in Cambridge. He died at the age of 90, on December 11, 1996.