By Gwyneth K. Shaw
By the time she retired in 2014, Professor Eleanor Swift was a titan of Berkeley Law. Just the fifth woman appointed to the faculty, she was a renowned scholar and beloved teacher as well as a crucial figure in creating and building the school’s Clinical Program.
But before Swift rose to legendary status, she had to fight the school, and UC Berkeley, for her seat at the table. In 1987, Swift was denied tenure — sparking a dramatic controversy including petitions, student protests, and even an airplane flying a banner advocating for her and colleague Marjorie Shultz over the campus’ Greek Theatre.
Swift won a reversal in 1989 and was awarded tenure. The students in her first Civil Procedure class after the word got out broke into applause when she walked in.
Whatever bitterness she might have had over her colleagues’ rejection — some of the older male faculty refused to speak to her when she returned — never showed. Instead, Swift, who died in 2023, devoted herself to Berkeley Law in and out of the classroom.
She helped to develop the teaching program at what’s now the East Bay Community Law Center, then led a committee to create a clinical program. As associate dean under then-Dean Herma Hill Kay, Swift helped to hire clinical professors and integrate them into the larger faculty. Alongside then-Professors Angela Harris and Rachel Moran, she also founded what’s now known as the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice.
Through it all, Swift remained a popular and generous mentor, for Berkeley Law students and women in legal academia around the country.
Her brilliance and grace has inspired an alum, who wishes to remain anonymous, to donate $250,000 to establish the Eleanor Swift Scholarship Fund. At a time when rising prices and looming lifetime caps on student loans may put law school out of reach for a growing number of prospective students, he was moved to help. Invoking Swift’s stellar career and sterling character seemed like an obvious fit, he says.
“She was a really remarkable person, and she fought for what was right at a time when that was particularly hard for women,” says the alum, who took Swift’s Civil Procedure class as a 1L. “The fact that she won and then became this beloved, really important leader at the law school while touching so many students and being a great colleague, says a lot about her and the importance of learning to disagree agreeably, to do what’s right, and to stand your ground.
“I think her story is inspiring for everyone at Berkeley Law, and this scholarship fund will mean that at least one 1L coming in every year will know about her.”
Honoring a legacy
Swift was an important part of the donor’s experience at the school, and he fondly remembers impromptu chats with her on the sidewalk even after he graduated.
“She was always super nice and really interested in what I was doing,” he says. “I think if there were three words I’d use to describe her, they’d be fairness, perseverance, and kindness, and I think we need more lawyers to be like that.”
The donor hopes that other alumni will be similarly moved and give to expand the fund to serve more students. Increasing financial aid has been a priority for Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky: Expenditures have more than doubled under his tenure, to $30.9 million last year.
And it’s even more urgent now, particularly given new federal caps on student loans that limit professional students’ borrowing to $50,000 annually and $200,000 total.
Swift was devoted to her students and dedicated to improving access to law school and the legal profession. Each year, the law school gives the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service to an exceptional member of the Berkeley Law community — students, staff, and faculty are eligible — who has strengthened the school.
A scholarship bearing her name is fitting, Chemerinsky says.
“Eleanor Swift played an enormously important role at Berkeley Law for decades. She was a beloved teacher, a great scholar, and an important force in improving the school, such as in the creation of our Clinical Program,” he says. “It is truly wonderful and deserved to have this scholarship in her honor.”
A Radcliffe College graduate, Swift was one of only eight women in her Yale Law School class of 170. She clerked for a federal judge in Connecticut and U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge David Bazelon before moving to Houston to become a litigator at Vinson & Ellis.
In 1980, she accepted Berkeley Law’s job offer — the first woman to be hired through an arm’s-length process — because of its public mission-oriented philosophy. She met, and later married, Professor Bob Cole, and their partnership became a source of joy and strength for both for decades. (Cole died earlier this year at 95, but was aware of — and delighted by — the scholarship fund.)
In addition to Civil Procedure, Swift taught Evidence, and earned a national reputation for her work in that area. When she won the 2022 John Henry Wigmore Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools, one nomination lauded her 1987 California Law Review article, “A Foundation of Fact Approach to Hearsay,” as “a model of what I aspired to in my personal scholarship.”
Despite her success, Swift was voted down when she came up for tenure, as was Shultz. At the urging of Professor Sally Fairfax, then UC Berkeley’s faculty advisor on the status of women, Swift filed a grievance with the Academic Senate Privilege and Tenure Committee. Its initial review produced a preliminary finding of gender discrimination and called for a full evidentiary hearing.
After negotiations, a blue-ribbon panel was created to review and compare Swift’s case with those of the five men who had been granted tenure at the law school most recently. That committee unanimously decided her work met the tenure standard for the men and she should receive tenure. Shultz was also ultimately tenured.
Swift would go on to win the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the law school’s Rutter Award for outstanding teaching, and the Berkeley Law Alumni Association’s Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award. Not long before she retired, she joined the board of the UC Berkeley Women’s Faculty Club, presiding over a successful campaign to raise $1 million while serving as board president.
Swift’s inspiring story deserves to live on for generations of Berkeley Law students, the donor says. He hopes the scholarship fund will help do that.
“Lawyers are really important, and lawyers who are looking out for people are really important — and I think we should be trying to get people into the law school who want to do that,” he says. “Individuals matter, character matters, and people who want to help other people matter.”