In Memoriam
Thomas D. Rowe, Jr.
Tom Rowe ’64 died on July 11, 2026 at his home in Marina del Rey, CA. The cause was apparently a sudden heart attack. His wife, Susan French, survives him.
Here is his obituary, followed by two essays that Tom wrote on the occasions of our last two Yale reunions.
Obituary
The American Law Institute
August 21, 2026
Tom Rowe
1964 Yale graduation
Thomas D. Rowe Jr., a distinguished scholar of civil procedure, federal courts, complex litigation, and judicial remedies, died on July 11, 2026, at his home in Marina del Rey, California. He was 83. Rowe was a longtime member of the ALI, elected to ALI membership in 1977.
For more than three decades, Rowe was a member of the Duke Law School faculty, which he joined in 1975. He served as associate dean from 1981 to 1984 and senior associate dean in 1995-1996. He also taught at Georgetown, Michigan, Virginia, UCLA, and Pepperdine. He served with the U.S. Department of Justice and as a visiting scholar at the RAND Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice.
Tom Rowe
2019
Rowe was a prolific and influential scholar whose work explored some of the most important questions surrounding the operation of the civil justice system. He wrote extensively on civil procedure, complex litigation, federal jurisdiction, class actions, judicial remedies, and constitutional law. He was a longtime co-author of Civil Procedure, now in its sixth edition, as well as books on federal courts and constitutional theory. His scholarship combined close attention to legal doctrine with a sustained interest in how procedural rules affect litigants, courts, and the administration of justice.
During his nearly five decades as an ALI member, Rowe contributed his expertise to the Institute's work on the civil justice system. Among those contributions he authored the background paper for ALI's study “Paths to a ‘Better Way’: Litigation, Alternatives, and Accommodation,” examining litigation and alternative approaches to resolving disputes and the broader institutional and policy questions surrounding the administration of civil justice.
His interest in improving the operation of the courts extended beyond his scholarship and work with ALI. Rowe contributed to the federal civil-rulemaking process, and much of his scholarship examined opportunities for reform in areas including jurisdiction, discovery, class actions, settlement, and attorneys' fees.
A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rowe graduated from Yale University in 1964, tied for first in his class. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning an M.Phil. in 1967, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1970. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Rowe is survived by his wife, Susan F. French, an ALI member and distinguished scholar of property law. French served as a Reporter for the Restatement Third, Property (Servitudes) and continues her involvement with the Institute as a Consultant on the Restatement Fourth, Property.
Over a career spanning more than five decades, Rowe made important contributions to legal scholarship, legal education, and the administration of justice. ALI remembers him with gratitude for nearly 50 years of membership and service to the Institute and extends its condolences to Susan and to his family, friends, colleagues, and former students.
Essay, 60th Reunion Book
by Tom Rowe
May 2024
My wife Susan French and I enjoy living in Marina del Rey, near Santa Monica Bay. We finished our law-teaching careers a decade ago but keep doing a bit of legal writing.
Despite mobility problems we do a fair bit of traveling — cruises and road trips. We visit Susan’s daughter and our thriving grandchildren in Seattle. We had twelve very good years with our 43-foot sailboat — Susan the skipper and I the first mate — before selling it in 2020. One year we sailed to Cabo San Lucas and then sailed from La Paz, Baja California Sur, up into the Sea of Cortez. Much of our social life is centered around the nearby California Yacht Club and friends we have made there.
I send my best to all.
Essay, 50th Reunion Book
by Tom Rowe
May 2014
Freud had it only two-thirds right when he said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” As others have suggested, there’s also play.
I found fairly far along in life, my late fifties, what has proved to be an enduring love with my wife since 2001, Susan French, like me a retired law professor (she from UCLA, I from Duke). We share a joy that many classmates no doubt also find most fulfilling as we age, grandparenting: in our case Susan’s granddaughter Ellie, born in December 2011. She keeps us fascinated and delighted, and racking up frequent-flier miles as we visit her and her parents in Seattle from our home in Los Angeles.
I’ve also been fortunate in being able to continue satisfying work in partial retirement. Being a retired academic is not a bad racket. Susan and I both teach part time at the UCLA School of Law, and we work on new editions of teaching books. I continue other academic writing, and we keep going to professional meetings that interest us.
And being at least partially retired, we have a good deal of time for the play side, leisure pursuits that we both enjoy, including food and wine, sailing, and travel. I’m the household sommelier, and Susan is skipper of our 43’ sailboat Bateau Frowe (after the combination of our last names, French and Rowe). We enjoy cruises in Southern California waters and have taken the Bateau as far as Cabo San Lucas and La Paz in Baja California Sur, plus bareboat chartering in places like New Zealand and Tahiti.
We’re fortunate to be in good health and plan to keep enjoying travels as long as we can. We’ve recently been finding some most interesting commercial cruises, to places like Alaska, Turkey and the Aegean, the lower Danube (a region that has produced more history than can be consumed locally), the Galapagos, the Baltic, and Norwegian fjords. One of these years, Antarctica.