It is with immense sadness that the Faculty of Law announces the passing of Professor Emeritus, Jacob Ziegel.
Jacob Ziegel, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, died in his 97th year, at Hazelton Place in Toronto.
He held LLB, LLM, PhD and LLD degrees from the University of London, an honorary LLD from the University of Victoria and the Law Society's medal of honour. Born in Germany on October 7, 1927, Jacob was on a Kinder Transport to England just before WWII. Both of his parents perished in the Holocaust. Descendants of his brother and sister live in Israel, England and the United States. His former wife, Adrienne Folb, predeceased him.
Between 1962 and 1975, he taught law at the University of Saskatchewan, McGill University and Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. In 1975, Jacob joined the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he taught until he was compulsorily retired in 1993. He was not pleased but took emeritus status and carried on as before with his scholarship and teaching.
Widely recognized as the dean of commercial and consumer law in Canada, Jacob was the convenor of the Annual Workshop of Commercial and Consumer Law for over 40 years and Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Business Law Journal for 35 years. Appropriately, he was awarded the first Jacob Ziegel Medal for his lifetime development of commercial law in Canada by the CBLJ.
His outstanding international reputation led to his being a life member of the American Law Institute and a founding member of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law. Jacob wrote numerous important reports, articles and books, including Hire Purchase and Conditional Sale (with Roy Goode), Comparative Consumer Insolvency Regimes, and The Ontario Personal Property Security Act. He was an editor of casebooks on Secured Transactions in Personal Property, and Partnerships and Canadian Business Corporations. Jacob was as well known for his advocacy for formal, transparent processes in the choice of judges, especially for the Supreme Court of Canada.
While he was at Hazelton Place (a retirement residence), he was wonderfully looked after by Jocelyn Bayot. In the words of other law professors, Jacob was an outstanding and lively scholar, a warm and wonderful colleague, and a devoted friend.
Reposted from the Globe and Mail obituaries.
