Honoring a legacy of brilliance, humanity, and teaching
For more than four decades, Professor Patrick L. Baude shaped generations of lawyers at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. A nationally respected constitutional scholar, gifted teacher, and generous mentor, he challenged students to think deeply, embrace complexity, and grapple with the moral dimensions of the law. His influence reached far beyond the classroom — into courtrooms, statehouses, and communities across the country — through students who carried his standards into their own careers.
When Baude passed away in January 2011, alumni from across more than four decades wrote to the Law School with the same refrain, again and again:
"He was the best teacher I ever had."
It wasn't an exaggeration. It was a consensus.
Colleagues remembered a teacher who never needed to perform to command a room — his brilliance, paired with humility and warmth, was enough. As one alumnus put it: "His humanity was as huge as his intellect."
Another recalled what it felt like to be in Baude's classroom: "I felt I was sitting at the feet of Aristotle."
Baude joined the faculty in 1968 after earning a JD from the University of Kansas and his LLM from Harvard Law School. Over his career he taught Constitutional Law, Federal Jurisdiction, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Procedure, Remedies, and Professional Responsibility.
He held the Ralph F. Fuchs Professorship of Law and Public Service, argued significant constitutional cases, advised state leaders, wrote extensively on the Indiana Constitution, and served for many years as faculty advisor to the Indiana Law Journal — remaining active in the classroom even after his 2008 retirement, until his death in 2011.
But ask anyone who knew him, and the scholarship is only part of the story. What they remember is a teacher who made students want to think harder — who turned the ordinary into the extraordinary, and who did it with humor, rigor, and an unwavering belief in the law as a public trust.
Over 40 years in the classroom, Baude taught more than 15,000 students — and won nearly every teaching honor the university and Law School had to give, including the university's Distinguished Teaching Award, the Law School's Gavel Award (twice), its Wallace Teaching Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award in Teaching.
Baude's scholarly and teaching excellence meant he could have had his pick of law schools to work for. But he remained in Bloomington, cherishing the lifelong friendships he had with colleagues like Harry Pratter, Tom Schornhorst, and Roger Dworkin.
"This," said Baude's widow, Julia Lamber, "was his home."
