In honor of the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Romaine L. Gardner Esq., a long-time Fordham Law clinical professor who died in September 2024, his family has established a generous scholarship in his name.
Dr. Gardner was recruited by Professor Emeritus Constantine Katsoris to help found Fordham Law’s Securities Litigation and Arbitration Clinic. Dr. Gardner also was a professor, a litigator, and a pastor. A lifelong student, he earned multiple advanced degrees in philosophy and law and made a profound impact during his tenure at Fordham Law.
“I had the honor and pleasure of working with Romaine Gardner while he was at the law school,” said Professor Ian Weinstein, who teaches Legal Ethics. “Romaine was a very talented teacher and his clinic flourished, finding an enthusiastic audience at the Law School and making a real difference in his clients’ lives. He was also a wonderful and wise colleague. He was a very talented lawyer, he had a deep love of learning and he was a paragon of integrity. He contributed so much to his students and the law school and we miss him greatly.”
Through the securities clinic, Dr. Gardner helped law students learn how to protect clients—real community members of New York who were unable to pay for an attorney—against predatory broker investment advice.
The clinic gives students hands-on experience conducting client interviews, fact investigation, discovery, and settlement negotiations. Students work with expert witnesses and learn how to make opening statements and closing arguments, conduct direct and cross examinations of witnesses at arbitrations, communicate with arbitrators and advocate during mediations.
Dr. Gardner’s students left the clinic with the experience of helping clients who could not afford legal counsel and the confidence to represent their future clients in securities litigation and arbitration.
Dr. Gardner has left a legacy at Fordham, as the clinic continues to serve as an important experiential learning opportunity for Fordham Law students today. It is now led by Professor Paul Radvany, a former deputy chief of the Criminal Division of the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
Dr. Gardner’s wife, Jane, hopes that this scholarship in his name will lighten the financial burden of students pursuing a legal education at Fordham. “It is difficult when you have to have a side job in order to continue [studying]. The more they’re able to continue to concentrate on their studies, the better lawyers they are going to be,” she said.
The couple was married for 68 years until Dr. Gardner’s death. “Romaine was a good person to everybody. He helped people as much as he could,” she continued.
Dr. Gardner met his wife at St. Olaf College, where he earned his B.A before attending the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. Once ordained, they moved to New York, where he served as assistant pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Maspeth, Queens. He later earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia, taught at Wagner College, and—intrigued by philosophy of law—attended Brooklyn Law School at night. After working at Cadwallader, Wickersham and Taft and at Paine Webber, he entered academia, launching the first securities clinic at Brooklyn Law, which would become the basis for Fordham’s own securities clinic.
Reflecting on Dr. Garner’s dynamic and multifaceted career, his brother-in-law Bill Andrews said, “What I admired most about Romaine was his record of professional success—the most remarkable of any I have known.”