Simon Fodden ’65

Simon’s four-year battle with cancer ended Feb. 10, 2018, six weeks short of his 74th birthday, the original of which occurred in Leeds, England.

He came to us from Milwaukee University School. At Princeton he ate at Campus and majored in the Woodrow Wilson School.

He attended Johns Hopkins and earned a law degree from Osgoode Hall in Canada, where he taught for his entire career. There, he helped found the school’s program in poverty law and later helped launch its program in family law, serving — in the words of that school’s eulogy to him — “as a well regarded scholar, lecturer, and teacher, and the author of two novels.” In 2014 he received the Canadian Bar Association’s president’s award for “significant contributions to the Canadian legal community.”

An early adapter of technology in legal education, Simon saw its potential to enrich debate and discovery in law. In 2005 he helped found Canada’s leading online legal magazine and blog, Slaw.ca, remaining publisher until 2014. The dean of Osgoode put it best by saying, “In so many ways, he made Osgoode a better community. He will be sorely missed and his memory cherished.”

Simon is survived by his wife, Christine Hawkes; and daughters Jennifer and Rebecca Fodden Saha. To them we extend our condolences at their loss of our learned and energetic classmate.