Y

ou might not think Sens. Mitch 
McConnell and Gary Peters had 
anything in common. They are 
on opposite sides of nearly 
every important issue. The 
dour Senate minority leader 
is nearly old enough to be 
the hard-working Michigan 
Democrat’s father.
But they do share something 
no other two U.S. senators 
do: Both are former law students of Robert 
“Bob” Sedler, now Wayne State University’s 
Distinguished Professor of Constitutional 
Law, who earlier taught at the University of 
Kentucky.
They are far from the only famous law-
yers to have been trained by Sedler, who 
has had an enormous impact on the legal 
profession and the law itself, nationally and 
internationally.
However, while it is entirely possible that 
more of his former students will become 
famous in the future, there won’t be any 
more Sedler alumni after this year. This 
month, Bob Sedler is finally retiring.
“It’s time — I’m ready to retire,
” he said 
with a large grin during an interview in his 
Southfield home, decorated largely with 
furniture and art collected during a lifetime 
of world travel. That all started in 1963, 
when he and his wife, Rozanne, who had 
just earned a master’s in social work, went 
to Ethiopia as part of a Ford Foundation 
project to teach and help set up a law school 
in that country.
“You know, I hadn’t really noticed 

because I’ve been so busy, but we are old!” 
he said with a laugh, “and I realize I want to 
be retired! I don’t want to do anything!”
That seems hard to believe. Though 
on paper, Sedler turns 86 on Sept. 11, he 
doesn’t look, or act, his age. When Dana 
Nessel, another Sedler alum, was elected 
Michigan attorney general in 2018, she 
immediately made him an (unpaid) special 
assistant AG.
When she heard her mentor was finally 
retiring, she said, “Bob Sedler’s impact is 
immense and far-reaching. He has instilled 
an understanding of the law in generations 
of students, many of whom now serve in 
this very department. The guidance and 
mentorship he provided to many young 
legal minds is beyond comparison.
” 
She’s far from alone in thinking that. 
During his career, Sedler has argued and 
won two cases before the U.S. Supreme 
Court, helped make same-sex marriage a 
nationally recognized constitutional right 
and successfully fought more civil rights 
cases than can be easily counted.
He’s consulted with the late Supreme 
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, met 
President Barack Obama at the White 
House, had a major impact on legal issues 
in Michigan and has spoken all over the 
world.
“Rozanne and I have had an incredible 
life,
” he said. His wife, and partner in every-
thing, is a clinical and geriatric social work-
er who also recently retired from Jewish 
Family Service.
Not bad for a man who was born during 

the Great Depression in Pittsburgh to par-
ents who came to this country as children 
by families who were escaping oppression 
in Czarist Russia. (The name was originally 
Seder, but, as often the case, was anglicized 
by immigration officials, probably at Ellis 
Island.) 
To say there was little money when 
Sedler was growing up in a tiny, crowded 
house was an understatement. His father 
never went beyond elementary school. But 
Bob was determined to become a lawyer; he 
competed successfully for scholarships and 
worked part-time and summers as a shoe 
salesman for nine years.

MEETING ROZANNE
But his hero as a student was not Benjamin 
Cardozo or Felix Frankfurter, but a lawyer 
who inspired thousands of idealistic young 
people of Sedler’s generation: Illinois Gov. 
Adlai Stevenson, who ran for president 
against Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 
1956.
Sedler was head of Students for 
Stevenson at the University of Pittsburgh in 
1956 in his first year in law school. A pic-
ture appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
of Bob, in his first year of law school, stand-
ing on a soap box at a Stevenson rally. The 
former Rozanne Friedlander, then a student 
at Penn State, saw his picture.
Stevenson was crushed in a historic 
landslide, but Rozanne and Bob did end up 
meeting — and marrying in 1960. Their 
son Erik now is the managing director and 
founder of Kivvit, a public relations and 
consulting firm that is the successor to a 
firm Sedler co-founded with Obama advis-
er David Axelrod. Their daughter Beth is a 
social worker in Los Angeles; each has two 
children.
After a brief stint in the Army (“I was 
worried about the drill where we had to 
throw live grenades”), he taught briefly 
at Rutgers and then St. Louis University 
when the opportunity came up to go to 
Ethiopia. “
All life is happenstance. I looked 
at Rozanne — we were 28 and 25; we had 
no children yet, and why not?”
Two months later, they were lying in bed 
in Addis Ababa in the middle of the night 
when the phone rang. President John F. 
Kennedy had been assassinated they were 
told. No additional details were known.
That was an era before television or 
trans-Atlantic phone calls were possible 

OUR COMMUNITY

Retiring WSU law professor looks back 
on a lifetime of accomplishments.
Legal Warrior

Robert 
Sedler

18 | MAY 13 • 2021 

JACK LESSENBERRY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Sedler family: Erik Sedler, Marla 
Sedler, Chole Sedler, Rozanne and Bob 
Sedler, Braden Sedler, Tom Foster, Beth 
Foster, Brielle Foster, Jayce Foster

