Founder of law school, Godfrey, dies

PORTLAND – Edward Godfrey, founding dean of the University of Maine School of Law, former justice on Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court and an eminent figure in state and national legal circles, has died. He was 91.

Godfrey, who died Wednesday, loved the law school he helped to create so much he used to personally remove cigarette butts and even occasionally mowed the lawn.

Colleen Khoury, the law school’s dean, said Godfrey remained an enormous presence at the school, teaching until just a few years ago and frequenting his office there until about two months ago.

“He was an incredibly wonderful man,” said Maine’s chief justice, Leigh Saufley. “People will remember him for his brilliance and his wit, but most of all, he was a truly wonderful person, and many of us are grieving quite badly at his passing.”

When Godfrey arrived in Maine in 1961, the state’s only law school belonged to the private Portland University. It was not accredited by the American Bar Association, didn’t have its own library and did not have a full-time faculty.

The Legislature, believing that Maine needed a state law school, authorized the University of Maine to re-establish its long-closed law school in Portland, and merge with the private school.

Godfrey, a Harvard College and Columbia University law graduate who was then a 48-year-old professor at Albany Law School in New York, was chosen to build Maine’s new law school essentially from scratch.

Within three years, the school was accredited.