Phoebe Haddon ’85 LL.M. receives top honor from AALS

Rutgers University-Camden Chancellor Phoebe A. Haddon ’85 has been selected as the recipient of the 2019 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Women in Legal Education.

This prominent award honors individuals with exemplary careers that demonstrate outstanding contributions to the legal academy and the legal profession through their teaching, service, and scholarship. Recipients are selected on how their work impacts women, the legal community, the academy, and issues that affect women through mentoring, writing, speaking, and activism, and by providing opportunities to others.

Haddon will receive the Ginsburg Award during the AALS annual meeting in New Orleans on Friday, Jan. 4.

The AALS established the award in 2013, when the inaugural award honored Ginsburg. The AALS is an organization of 179 law schools in the United States that seeks to uphold and advance excellence in legal education.

Haddon also has been named the recipient of a 2019 Smith College Medal, which recognizes alumnae who exemplify in their lives and work the ability of a liberal arts education to transform lives and communities.  A 1972 graduate of Smith College, the Rutgers University–Camden chancellor is among four high-profile leaders selected for this honor, including U.S. Representative Nicola Sauvage Tsongas (D.-Mass.), television and film producer Lydia Tenaglia-Collins, and conductor Carolyn Chi-An Kuan.

The Smith College Medal will be presented at the Massachusetts institution on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

A nationally noted leader in issues related to access and equity, Haddon became chancellor of Rutgers University–Camden in 2014, assuming direct responsibility for the daily administration of a campus with more than more than 7,600 students and 1,300 employees. 

Under her leadership, the university has widened affordable access through its Bridging the Gap program, which provides full or significant tuition coverage for New Jersey’s working families. She also has expanded the institution’s nationally recognized civic engagement program. 

She is a Class C director and deputy board chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.  

A member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on the Future of Legal Services, she serves on the boards of the Cooper University Health System, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Camden Health & Athletic Association, and HERS (Higher Education Resource Services).  In 2014, Haddon was an invited speaker at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute, and in October 2014, she was among the “Women of Distinction” honored by Philadelphia Business Journal. In 2015, she received the Trailblazer Award from the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association.  She was among the statewide leaders honored by the Executive Women of New Jersey in 2018.

Prior to her arrival at Rutgers University–Camden, Haddon served as dean of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she secured a transformative $30 million gift to the school.  She previously served as a professor at the Temple University Beasley School of Law and as an associate in the litigation department at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.  She clerked for the Hon. Joseph Weis on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

A noted scholar in the areas of constitutional law, equal rights, and bias, Haddon is the coauthor of the books Tort Law: Cases, Problems, Perspectives (LEXIS, 2007), Tort Law: Cases and Materials (Matthew Bender, 2002), and Constitutional Law Anthology (Anderson, 1997).  She has published numerous articles in prominent legal and academic journals and books.

Haddon earned her juris doctor from Duquesne University School of Law in 1977 and her LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1985.  She resides in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with her husband, Frank McClellan, a professor of law at Temple University.