Legal Aid Pioneer Bellow Dies

Brandeis Professor of Law Gary Bellow died of a heart attack Thursday afternoon at Mount Auburn Hospital, closing a life of progressive legal advocacy and education.

Bellow was one of the first academicians to bring public-interest law practice into the classroom. Before joining the Harvard Law School in 1971, he worked as a defense attorney and activist for the poor and underprivileged.

At the law school, Bellow created what would become the country's foremost clinical legal program, mentoring a new generation of progressive lawyers.

"The legal profession and those who must struggle to be served by our system of justice have lost a great teacher and an ardent advocate," said John Hamilton, Jr., Bellow's Law School classmate and current chair of the Hale and Dorr Legal Service Center, which Bellow founded.

Born June 9, 1935 in New York City, Bellow received an A.B. from Yale University in 1957, an LL.B. in 1960 from the Harvard Law School and an LL.M. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1961.

Bellow served a year in the army before focusing his efforts on community organization and on legal defense for the poor and underrepresented in Washington, D.C.

His work there for the Legal Aid Agency and Public Defenders Service led to his 1968 appointment as director of the United Planning Organization, a community action group.

During these years, Bellow turned his legal talent into a political tool.

"We discovered the best legal education America had to offer didn't teach us how to get someone out of a cellblock," Bellow once said of the challenges he faced as a public defender.

In 1966, after moving to California, Bellow continued his advocacy on a larger scale. He helped to create and run the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (CRLAF) from 1966 to 1968.

During these years, Bellow worked with migrant farm laborers in the San Joaquin Valley. He was an attorney to civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, who was fighting to unionize migrant Mexican farm workers.

Bellow's work drew him into conflict with then-Acting Governor of California Ronald W. Reagan.

"I've heard it said that Reagan's doubts about government-funded legal services were largely formed through his experiences with CRLAF," said Walmsley University Professor Frank I. Michelman.

Bellow was hired as an associate professor of law at the University of Southern California.

He continued to defend the United Farm Workers and took on more activist clients, including the radical Black Panther Party.

"He was able to forcefully argue against injustice--prosecuting people for their politics or poverty, rather than their crimes," said Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree.

Bellow came to Harvard in 1971, where he incorporated his life's work into his teaching.

"He was my first true teacher of zealous advocacy. I continue to use his logic of public interest lawyering in my work teaching the next cadre of public interest lawyers," said Ogletree, who studied under Bellow in 1976.

At Harvard, Bellow was one of the first practitioners of clinical legal education, teaching students in the classroom and sending them into the field to practice what they learned.

"He basically spearheaded, maybe invented, clinical education," Michelman said.

With his wife, Harvard Law School Lecturer Jeanne Charn, Bellow founded the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plains. The center enables law school students to practice real cases and provides legal services to the poor.

The center became "the envy of clinicians around the country," according to Dean of the Law School Robert C. Clark.

Bellow leaves his wife; sons Douglas of Cambridge, Mass., and David; daughter Courtenay Kettleson of Medford, Mass.; and sisters Helaine Gould of Manhasset, New York, and Bonnie Bellow of New York City.

Burial will be private. A memorial service will be held at Harvard University at a later date.