Alumnus Ben Barros ’96 was the cover feature in the fall 2015 issue of the University of Toledo College of Law’s Transcript magazine. Barros was appointed dean of the college last summer.
After graduating from Colgate, he worked a few years for Macmillan Publishing in New York before enrolling in Fordham law school’s evening program. It was while sitting in his first year property course with Professor Bill Treanor (now dean at Georgetown University Law Center) that the idea of a career as a law professor began to percolate. Barros was immediately smitten with the intellectual rigors of law school and with property law in particular.
“Something about property law clicked with me,” said Barros. “I loved thinking about property from an academic perspective, perhaps because I had a background in philosophy. I was always asking Professor Treanor oddball questions. One of those questions – about the nature and scope of the state’s regulatory police power – led to my first major article, although I didn’t actually publish it until six years later.” Dean Barros graduated from Fordham University School of Law, where he was an editorial board member on the Fordham Law Review and a member of Order of the Coif, in 1996.