Professor Emerita Marie Failinger
Professor Emerita Marie Failinger, who served as Hamline University School of Law’s final dean before its 2015 combination with William Mitchell College of Law, has died at age 73, following more than 40 years of service to Mitchell Hamline and the legal community.
“Marie was deeply committed to a career in law as a public service in the broadest sense possible,” said Professor Kate Kruse, who served as an associate dean at Hamline Law while Failinger was interim dean leading up to the combination. “She lived her values of access to justice, gender inclusion in the legal profession, and the integration of faith into her professional life both in the larger projects she launched and in her personal relationships as a teacher, mentor, and friend.”
Raised in the Midwest, Failinger attended college and law school at Valparaiso University in Indiana, initially working for a legal services organization before earning a master’s degree at Yale and switching to legal education.
Failinger teaching in 1983
Recruited to Hamline Law in 1983, she helped transform the law school founded just a few years prior into a flourishing institution. There, she twice served as associate dean before taking on the mantle of interim dean to shepherd the school through its combination with William Mitchell in 2015, spending nine months in intense negotiations with the American Bar Association.
Professor Mark Gordon, who would become the first president and dean of the newly formed Mitchell Hamline School of Law, said, “Marie played an incredibly supportive and important role in enabling the combination to occur and to succeed, and we are all forever in her debt for that.”
As a professor, Failinger taught a range of subjects including constitutional, criminal, family, and property law. In 2016, she earned the first Judge Edward J. Devitt Professorship, which is awarded to a professor who demonstrates and promotes a high standard of ethics and professionalism in their teaching, writing, and outreach.
Even after Failinger retired from Mitchell Hamline in 2023, her dedication to and involvement with the school remained steadfast. She was a de facto historian for Mitchell Hamline and its predecessor schools, kept emeriti faculty connected with the law school, and continued to support students, even giving feedback on papers in her final months.
Failinger was a leading voice on women in the legal profession and a founder of the Infinity Project, an organization dedicated to getting more women on the bench at the state and federal level within Minnesota’s Eighth Judicial Circuit.
“Marie was such a generous person and never stopped giving back to the legal community,” said Professor Ana Pottratz Acosta, citing how she and others benefitted from Failinger’s leadership of the McAffrey Group, a mentorship group at Mitchell Hamline for women faculty members.
Failinger was not only a mentor but also a shining example of how to be a compassionate and tireless leader and advocate for others.
“Marie has been my role model in every way that matters,” said Vice Dean of Academics Morgan Holcomb, who also served as associate dean at Hamline Law under Failinger’s deanship. “As a teacher, she showed me how high expectations and deep empathy aren’t opposites—they’re partners. As a scholar, she modeled how to do work that matters, and how to do it with integrity and impact. And as a colleague, she showed me what real faculty citizenship looks like—showing up, speaking up, and lifting others up.”
A prolific scholar, Failinger wrote about a wide variety of topics, but her passion focused on the intersection of the law and religion, drawing from her Lutheran faith. She served as editor-in-chief of the highly regarded Journal of Law and Religion for nearly a quarter century until 2013.
From left, George Latimer, Marie Failinger, Judge Harry Blackmun, and Larry Osnes, Hamline University’s 18th president
In honor of her scholarship and legacy, Mitchell Hamline Law Review Vol. 50, Issue 3, was dedicated to Failinger. In his dedication, professor emeritus and former Hamline Law dean Ed Butterfoss wrote, “Marie was a dedicated, effective teacher; a remarkable, deep-thinking and productive scholar; and she engaged in prolific and important service. […] Marie’s scholarship was original, intellectually robust, and often dealt with, and offered a unique take on, significant moral and ethical issues facing the legal profession and the world.”
Eric Janus, who served as president and dean of William Mitchell prior to the combination, summarizes the sentiments of so many who knew Marie Failinger: “I am grateful that I had an opportunity to be her colleague, grateful that our school and our students had the benefit of her wisdom and values, and grateful for her persistent focus on advancing human rights and social justice. May her memory be a blessing.”
Failinger left an impact on everyone with whom she interacted—colleagues, students, judges, and clients alike—and she will be forever missed and remembered at Mitchell Hamline.
A visitation will be held on Sun., Nov. 2, from 12 to 2 pm at Bradshaw Funeral Home in White Bear Lake. Funeral services will be held on Mon., Nov. 3, at 11 am at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in St. Paul, with visitation one hour prior. Light refreshments and burial at Elmhurst Cemetery will follow the service.