Memorial Service for Rutgers–Newark Law School Professor John Payne Set for October 18

Newark, NJ – John M. Payne, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, will be honored by family, colleagues, students, and friends at a memorial service at the law school on Sunday, October 18, 2009, beginning at 1 pm. Professor Payne died on June 16 at the age of 67. 

Co-eulogists will be the Honorable Sylvia B. Pressler, Presiding Judge (Ret.), Appellate Division, Superior Court of New Jersey, and Neil Levine, E.B. Gleason Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, and Vice President, Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Other speakers will share their special recollections. A reception will follow the service. RSVP required to paynememorial@kinoy.rutgers.edu. 

Professor Payne was a key intellectual force and leading lawyer in the Mt. Laurel cases, which established the requirement that growing suburban communities include provisions for low and moderate income housing in their zoning regulations. He was also a driving force for historic preservation in New Jersey and critical to protecting the work and legacy of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He was named a Rutgers Distinguished Service Professor in 2004 in recognition of his leadership and advocacy in the housing reform and historic preservation movements together with his devotion to the advancement of the law school and the University.  

As an academic, Professor Payne wrote and lectured extensively. In addition to his Mt. Laurel writing and articles on housing and historic preservation issues, he co-edited one of the most highly respected and widely-used casebooks on land development and land use law (Planning and Control of Land Development, 7th ed., 2008, with Daniel Mandelker et al.). Professor Payne joined the Rutgers faculty in 1971. He taught Land Use, Constitutional Law, Torts, and a Seminar on the Current Supreme Court.

The law school is establishing the John M. Payne Memorial Fund, which will support activities relating to Professor Payne’s scholarly interests. Donations to the Memorial Fund should be made out to the Rutgers University Foundation, with a notation that the donation is for the John M. Payne Memorial Fund, and mailed to the Dean’s Office, Rutgers School of Law–Newark, 123 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102.