Banks McDowell, Former Washburn Law Professor, Passes Away
Washburn Law School is saddened to report that Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus Banks McDowell passed away Sunday, February 18, 2001 due to a stroke. Professor McDowell taught at Washburn from 1982 until his retirement in 1995. He held the Austin B. Fletcher Professorship at Boston University School of Law before coming to Washburn. He was a prolific writer of books and articles in the areas of insurance law and professional responsibility. He also taught contracts and jurisprudence. After retirement, Banks and his wife Ellen relocated to Kingston in Ontario, Canada.
The following article appeared in the Vol. 34, no. 1 (Spring 1995) issue of The Circuit Rider upon Professor McDowell's retirement.
Banks McDowell, Distinguished Professor, Retires
At the age of 14, after reading Perry Mason mysteries and Irving Stone's biography of Clarence Darrow, Banks McDowell decided he wanted to be a trial lawyer. In his senior year at the University of Tulsa School of Law, Joe Morris '46, his oil and gas teacher, along with the dean at Tulsa, recommended that he go to graduate school at the University of Michigan. It was at Michigan he chose instead to become a law teacher. Thirty-seven years after he began his career as a law teacher, Banks McDowell, Distinguished Professor of Law, has retired from Washburn University. He graded his last examinations in December, which is the part of his teaching responsibilities he liked least.
"There have been many rewards in my career," says McDowell. "Teaching suited me because there is more freedom and less pressure than in law practice. It's been gratifying to be able to make a difference to many students. I have always tried to teach them to think and be critical. Not only does teaching require that I help my students learn, but it makes it necessary for me to continue learning and writing about what I am learning."
After completing his graduate work at Michigan, McDowell was drafted into the army and sent to Frankfort, Germany. After discharge, he went to the University of Hamburg to study German law. There he met his wife, Ellen, whose grandfather was a sea captain and later harbor master of the port of Hamburg. Her father was an import-export merchant, who spent much of his life in Russia. Her cosmopolitan background had a very broadening effect on her husband and their two children, Carolyn, living in San Francisco, and David, who lives in Kansas City.
In January 1958, McDowell began his career as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa. In August 1959, he began teaching at Boston University School of Law, where, in 1970, he was named the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law. He left Boston in 1982 to come to Washburn. Washburn has been a hospitable place for him and consequently he has been very productive as a scholar here. His earlier scholarship was in contracts and legal education, but in the years at Washburn, he has concentrated primarily on insurance and professional ethics.
While at Washburn, he has published three books and a dozen articles, several of which have appeared in the Washburn Law Journal. In his twelfth year at Washburn, he was presented an "Honorary Life Member" award from the Washburn Law School Association, which he regards as a special honor. He commented that: "Washburn has the most loyal and supportive group of alumni of any law school I am acquainted with."
He and his wife plan to move to Kingston, Ontario, Canada. They have spent a number of vacations in Canada and a sabbatical at Queen's University in Kingston in 1990. They have always loved Canada, which they find a nice compromise between Ellen's Germany and Banks' America. Kingston is about the same size as Topeka and is located at the west end of the Thousand Islands Resort area where the Saint Lawrence River enters Lake Ontario.
McDowell says, "I am only retiring from teaching, not from living or from learning." In addition to his leisure activities of reading, baking, and travelling, he wants to write at least two more books. One will be an expansion of his last article, "The Excuses That Make Professional Ethics Irrelevant." The tentative title for that book is Defenses, Excuses, and Alibis. The second planned book is The Devaluation of Consent, an analysis of one of our most fundamental concepts in contract theory, insurance law, political theory, and social relationships between free individuals.
The 1995 winter Washburn Law Journal is dedicated to McDowell. There he writes about his impressions of Washburn in a piece called "Reflections on Thirteen Years at Washburn."
