FEBRUARY 10 • 2022 | 69

P

rofessor Yale Kamisar, 
legal scholar and 
author, died peacefully 
on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022, in 
Ann Arbor, Michigan, sur-
rounded by his loving family. 
Yale was born in the Bronx, 
N.Y., on Aug. 29, 1929, to 
Samuel and Mollie (Levine) 
Kamisar, Eastern European 
Jewish immigrants with lim-
ited formal education. From 
these modest beginnings, 
he became an eminent legal 
scholar, author and teacher. 
At the time of his passing, 
Yale was the Clarence Darrow 
Distinguished University 
Professor Emeritus of Law at 
the University of Michigan, 
where he had taught (and 
entertained) students for 40 
years. 
A nationally recognized 
authority on constitutional 
law and criminal procedure, 
Professor Kamisar was often 
referred to as the “father of 
Miranda” for his influential 
role in the landmark U.S. 
Supreme Court decision 
of Miranda v. Arizona in 
1966. The Court cited one 
of Kamisar’s most famous 
essays, “Equal Justice in the 
Gatehouses and Mansions 
of American Criminal 
Procedure,
” in that decision. 
But Professor Kamisar’s 
contributions to the field of 
criminal law extend far beyond 
Miranda. His writings on crim-
inal law and the administration 
of justice spanned decades, 
influencing generations of 
scholars, jurists and lawyers. 
Professor Kamisar’s work 
has been cited in more than 30 
U.S. Supreme Court opinions 
and hundreds of lower federal 
court and state court decisions. 
Francis A. Allen, former dean 

of University of Michigan 
Law School, described Yale’s 
book Police Interrogation and 
Confessions: Essays in Law and 
Policy (1980), as “one of the 
great achievements of legal 
scholarship since the end of the 
Second World War.
” 
Professor Kamisar also 
wrote extensively on the U.S. 
Supreme Court, contribut-
ing to five annual volumes 
of The Supreme Court: Trends 
and Developments, as well as 
chapters on criminal proce-
dure for The Burger Court: The 
Counter-Revolution That Wasn’t, 
The Burger Years and The Warren 
Court: A Retrospective.
A prolific casebook writer, 
Professor Kamisar co-authored 
10 editions of Modern Criminal 
Procedure: Cases, Comments 
& Questions, and 10 editions 
of Constitutional Law: Cases, 
Comments & Questions over a 
50-year span. Most law schools 
continue to use these text-
books today, a testament to the 
enduring value of his work.
Over the years, Professor 
Kamisar received a range of 
honors and awards in recog-
nition of his contributions to 
law and legal scholarship. In 
1978, he received an L.L.D. 
honorary degree from John 
Jay College of Criminal Justice, 
City University of New York. 
The following year, he received 
an honorary degree from the 
University of Puget Sound. In 
1990, the National Law Journal 
named him as one of the 100 
most influential lawyers in the 
country. 
When Professor Kamisar 
retired from full-time teaching 
in 2004, U.S. Supreme Court 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
wrote a tribute, stating that 
“from his early years as a 

law teacher, Yale produced 
path-marking scholarship.
” She 
added: “with Yale … I have 
seen not only the mark of a 
great warrior, ever ready to 
leap into the breach to relieve 
injustice. I have seen, as well, a 
fine thinker at work, one ready 
to reconsider even long-held 
beliefs in hopes of finding a 
better answer.
” 
Professor Kamisar was 
an alumnus of New York 
University, which he attended 
on an academic scholarship, 
and Columbia Law School, 
where he was a member of the 
Columbia Law Review and grad-
uated second in his class. 
 Professor Kamisar was also 
a veteran who served as a 
first lieutenant in the United 
States Army during the Korean 
War. In 1952, he commanded 
a platoon in the assault on 
T-Bone Hill, during which he 
was wounded in one of the 
bloodiest battles of the war. 
During that battle, he ascended 
the enemy-occupied hill in 
broad daylight with just one 
man in front of him and hun-
dreds of soldiers behind him. 
He was awarded four military 
medals: the Purple Heart, the 
Presidential Unit Citation, 

the National Defense Service 
Medal and the Republic of 
Korea-Korea War Service 
Medal. 
After the war, he began his 
legal career as an associate 
at Covington and Burling in 
Washington, D.C., where he 
practiced antitrust law under 
the mentorship of firm part-
ner Dean Acheson, former 
Secretary of State in the Harry 
S. Truman Administration. 
Yale soon left private practice 
to begin his teaching career at 
the University of Minnesota 
Law School and then Harvard 
Law School. In 1965, he 
became a tenured professor 
at the University of Michigan, 
retiring in 2003. 
Yale was a loving husband, 
father and grandfather, who 
will be deeply missed by his 
family. He will be remembered 
not only for his devotion to 
his family but also for his keen 
sense of humor and extraordi-
nary ability to tell a great story, 
a talent that has been passed 
on to his sons. 
Professor Kamisar is 
survived by his wife, Joan 
(Russell); sons, David (Denise) 
Kamisar of West Bloomfield, 
Gordon (Karen) Kamisar 
of Sammamish, Wash., and 
Jonathan (Stacy) Kamisar of 
Weston, Conn,; grandchildren, 
Jennifer, Nicholas, Ben (Shelby 
Lopez) and Mia Kamisar; 
sister, Myrna (Jerry) Berkin; 
extended family members, 
friends, colleagues. He was 
preceded in death by his twin 
sister, Bernice (Samuel) Adler. 
Interment was at Forest 
Hill Cemetery, Ann Arbor. 
Contributions may be made 
to a charity of one’s choice. 
Arrangements by Ira Kaufman 
Chapel. 

U-M’s Constitutional Scholar

OBITUARIES
OF BLESSED MEMORY

Yale 
Kamisar

