David Fellman

At age 96, David Fellman died in Madison, Wisconsin, on November 23, 2003. During a long career, Fellman was widely known for distinguished scholarship and teaching in the field of public law, most notably for pioneering work on civil liberties, and for contributions to university government and academic freedom. He was deeply devoted to family and students, and institutionally to the University of Wisconsin and the American Association of University Professors. Prodigiously energetic during his professorial years, he remained active for two decades after retiring from the faculty in 1979.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 14, 1907, two years after his parents arrived as immigrants, Fellman was raised in an orthodox Jewish home in which biblical learning was fostered. He attended an academically rigorous Omaha public high school, and earned his way through the University of Nebraska mainly by teaching Hebrew in a religious school. Fellman received the B.A. (1928) and M.A. (1929) degrees at Nebraska, and the Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1934. He returned to the University of Nebraska to teach from 1934 to 1947, and left for Wisconsin (now the University of Wisconsin-Madison) where he served as a professor for 32 years and as the holder of one of the University's prestigious Vilas chairs for the last 15 of those years.

His many journal articles and several books provided clear and concise expositions of legal cases, and sharp, often critical analyses of judicial opinions. Old timers will remember those qualities from his annual article on constitutional law, reviewing the prior year's work of the U.S. Supreme Court, that appeared in the American Political Science Review, 1949–1961.

Among his books are The Defendant's Rights (1958), The Limits of Freedom (1959), The Supreme Court and Education (1960), The Constitutional Right of Association (1963), Religion in American Public Law (1965), and The Defendant's Rights Today (1976). Fellman was president of the Midwest Political Science Association, 1955–1956; founding editor of that Association's Midwest Journal of Political Science (now American Journal of Political Science), 1957–1959; vicepresident of the American Political Science Association, 1959–1960; Senior Research Fulbright Fellow, Great Britain, 1961–1962; holder of research grants from the Fund for the Republic, 1957–1958, and the Social Science Research Council, 1959–1960; and recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Nebraska, 1966.

In his early faculty years, like most of his contemporaries, Fellman taught many courses—most often American political thought and introductory American government—in addition to those in his major field. But even before he concentrated on public law courses, students appreciated their stimulating and demanding character. He taught general constitutional law, administrative law, and civil liberties (which as a separate course was thought to be the first in an American political science department). Until at least the 1960s, in a practice resembling that of law school courses, Fellman expected students to be able to respond in class by briefing assigned cases. He is well-remembered not only by students who remained in political science, but also by the larger number who went on to become lawyers and who regarded Fellman as the teacher who first inspired their legal careers. Especially satisfying for Fellman, however, was the opportunity to teach and advise a succession of graduate students who subsequently had successful careers in political science and gratefully recalled his helpful dissertation supervision.

Without slackening his scholarship and teaching, Fellman was a very active citizen of his university, state, and academic profession generally. At Wisconsin, he served three years on the faculty's most influential University Committee, and as its chair 1962–1963. Later in the 1960s, Fellman chaired a rules codification committee and was a leader in the development of a Faculty Senate to displace a no longer feasible town-meeting of all faculty members. From 1971 to 1978 he chaired the Honorary Degrees Committee. Fellman is also remembered in the Madison community for his successful, though controversial, motion, in a 1960 faculty meeting, to abolish boxing at the University. That contribution was revisited in a local newspaper story at the time of Fellman's death. He wrote speeches for two Democratic governors in the 1960s, and was a member of the Governor's Commissions on Human Rights and of the Governor's Commission on Constitutional Revision.

Fellman had reason to be most proud of his national service in the cause of academic freedom. A member of the American Association of University Professors for 61 years, he was on its Committee A from 1957 to 1971 and chaired it from 1959 to 1964, thus playing a major role in the Committee's traditional task of guarding academic freedom in the United States. Fellman became president of the AAUP in 1964–1966, and continued his AAUP service as a member of the Governing Board of its Legal Defense Fund into the 1990s.

Fellman's wife Sara died in 1994 after a marriage of 60 years. He is survived by two children, Laura and Michael, and by five grandchildren and two great grandchildren as well as by nieces and nephews. Hardworking though David was, he found time both for his family and for recreational activities. He and Sara enjoyed an active social life that involved a good deal of entertaining, and they both liked travel and music. David was also fond of baseball, indeed a long-suffering fan of the Chicago Cubs. Always interested in historical studies, David in his later years took special pleasure in reading the scholarly books on the American Civil War written by his professorial son Michael.