Professor Emeritus Roger Abrams has Passed Away

11.28.23 — Professor Emeritus Roger Abrams, who served as dean of Northeastern Law from 1999 to 2002, passed away on November 12, 2023, in University Park, Florida. A prolific author and leading authority on sports and labor law and legal education, Professor Abrams retired from Northeastern in 2018.

“As a member of the faculty, Roger was admired for his sports and labor law scholarship and was a beloved teacher. He was a door-always-open colleague and mentor who truly cared about every member of our community. His warmth and generosity of spirit will be missed,” said Dean James Hackney.

Professor Abrams’ passion for sports law and his encyclopedic legal knowledge of almost every game played in this country and beyond was legendary. Beyond his dedication to his students and scholarship, he served as a salary arbitrator for Major League Baseball and as a permanent arbitrator for the television, communications, electronics and coal industries, for the US Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service, Walt Disney World, the State of Florida and Lockheed-Martin Company.

With every book he wrote, Professor Abrams hit a home run. He published seven books on the business and history of sports: Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law (1998), The Money Pitch: Baseball Free Agency and Salary Arbitration (2000), The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903 (2003), The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs and Alcoholism in the National Pastime (2008), Sports Justice (2010) and Playing Tough: The World of Politics and Sports (2013). In addition, Professor Abrams was co-author of the leading sports law casebook, Sports and the Law, Text, Cases and Problems, published by West Publishing Company. In 2013, Bloomberg/BNA published his book on alternative dispute resolution, Inside Arbitration: Deciding a Labor and Employment Dispute. He also published an experiential course book on the practice of labor arbitration, The Labor Arbitration Workshop: An Experiential Approach (2016). In 2015, he was appointed to the New York Journal of Books (NYJB) Panel of Reviewers.

Prior to serving as dean of Northeastern Law, Professor Abrams served as dean of both Rutgers University’s law school in Newark, New Jersey, and Nova University Shepard Broad Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He began his academic career on the faculty of Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, where he became the youngest tenured full professor in the history of that university. After graduating from Harvard Law School cum laude in 1970, he clerked for Judge Frank M. Coffin of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, and then practiced with the Boston firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot in the areas of labor law and civil rights litigation. Professor Abrams was an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American Bar Foundation, the National Academy of Arbitrators and the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 2016, Professor Abrams was appointed as a neutral arbitrator for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Professor Abrams is survived by beloved wife, Fran, and sons, Seth and Jason.

About Northeastern University School of Law

The nation’s leader in experiential legal education since 1968, Northeastern University School of Law offers the longest-running, most extensive experience-based legal education program in the country. Northeastern guarantees its students unparalleled practical legal work experiences through its signature Cooperative Legal Education Program. More than 1,000 employers worldwide in a wide range of legal, government, nonprofit and business organizations participate in the program. With a focus on social justice and innovation, Northeastern University School of Law blends theory and practice, providing students with a unique set of skills and experiences to successfully practice law.

For more information, contact d.feldman@northeastern.edu