Dean of the University of Chicago Law School: 1994-1999
Biography
Douglas G. Baird was born July 10, 1953 in Philadelphia and grew up in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. He earned his BA in English summa cum laude from Yale College in 1975. He attended Stanford Law School, where he served as the Managing Editor of the Stanford Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He graduated from Stanford Law in 1979. Baird then clerked for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler and Judge Dorothy W. Nelson, when both sat on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1980, Baird joined the faculty at UChicago Law. Four years later, he became a full professor and was appointed Associate Dean of the Law School (a position he held until 1987). In 1989, he was named the Harry A. Bigelow Professor of Law and, in 1996, became the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law. From 1991-1994, Baird directed the Law and Economics Program. From 1994-1999, Baird served as the tenth dean of the Law School. Baird has also served as a visiting professor of law at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford law schools.
In addition to his legal career, Baird has pursued a passion for the culinary arts. He worked one night a week as a line cook at La Petite Folie, a French restaurant in Hyde Park, from 2001 to 2004.
Baird has contributed to the esprit de corps of the Law School by serving as the longtime auctioneer of the Chicago Law Foundation’s (CLF) annual auction. CLF is a student-led, not-for-profit group that supports students working in public interest law. The proceeds from the auction fund public service fellowships for students. The festive evening is described by many as the social event of the year for the Law School community and Baird’s auctioneering is one of its highlights.
Baird is a member of the American Law Institute and, since 1996, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the American Law and Economics Association, as well as President, Vice-President, and Secretary-Treasurer of the association. From 1997-1999, while dean of UChicago Law, Baird sat on the Board of Directors of the American Law Deans Association. He has been a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference (a nonpartisan organization of attorneys, law professors, and bankruptcy judges that advises Congress on bankruptcy law) since 1993 and currently serves as Chair of the organization, the first academic to do so. In 2003, Baird became a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy; he also sat on the organization’s board as well as served as its (virtual) scholar-in-residence for several years. Baird received the Distinguished Service Award from the Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal in 2008. Baird has also served as a director and officer of both the South East Chicago Commission and the Renaissance Society.
