Caleb Foote, 88; Longtime Professor at UC Berkeley Law School
Caleb Foote, a professor emeritus of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, died March 26 in Santa Rosa. He was 88.
Christopher Edley, dean of the law school, called Foote “one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and teachers in both family law and criminal law.”
Foote joined the Boalt faculty in 1965, specializing in criminal justice and constitutional law. According to an announcement on the school’s website, he was a prominent advocate of bail reform.
Foote was born in Cambridge, Mass., and graduated from Harvard, where he was the managing editor of the Harvard Crimson.
He earned a master’s degree there in 1941.
A Quaker, Foote was twice imprisoned during World War II for violating the Selective Service Act by refusing to perform alternative service. He was pardoned by President Harry S. Truman.
Foote spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during the war. Along with photographer Dorothea Lange, he produced a pamphlet on the issue called “Outcasts.”
After earning his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1950, he taught at the University of Nebraska and the University of Pennsylvania before joining the UC Berkeley faculty.
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