In Memoriam: Minnesota Law Remembers Former Professor Joyce A. Hughes '65   

Former University of Minnesota Law School Professor Joyce A. Hughes ’65 passed away on November 13, 2025. Born in Gadsden, Alabama, Hughes moved to Minneapolis and attended Minneapolis Central High School, where she graduated with honors and was the Class of 1957 valedictorian.
 
After high school, Hughes enrolled at Carleton College. During her undergraduate years, she was a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Carleton in 1961 and went on to study at the University of Madrid as a Fulbright Scholar. Her lifelong dedication to Carleton later included 30 years of service on the Board of Trustees, culminating in election as Trustee Emerita. In 2001, the college honored her with an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Upon returning from Madrid, Hughes enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School. At Minnesota Law, she served​ on the Minnesota Law Review. She graduated cum laude in 1965 and was a member Order of the Coif. Hughes was the first Black woman to earn a J.D. from​ ​Minnesota Law. In 1971, she became the first Black woman on the University of Minnesota ​Law School faculty and the first to serve as a tenure-track law professor at any majority law school in the nation.​ H​ughes was also the first woman and first African American to clerk for a Minnesota federal district court judge. She briefly practiced law in a small Minneapolis firm. In 2015, the St. Paul Federal Courthouse honored her as one of Minnesota’s leading women lawyers and judges.
 

In 1975, Northwestern University​ School of Law invited​ ​Hughes to serve as a visiting professor of law. Four years later, she became the first Black woman to earn tenure at Northwestern or at any majority law school in the country. Her teaching portfolio included evidence, civil procedure, constitutional law, refugees and asylum, real estate, and banking law. For more than four decades, she dedicated herself to teaching and mentoring, profoundly shaping the lives of countless students. One former student shared, “Her classroom was one of the few places where I did not feel out of place.” In 1991, she spent a sabbatical year teaching at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.​ Her scholarship included numerous articles in national law journals and a chapter, “Neither a Whisper Nor a Shout,” in Rebels in Law. She served on the Chicago Board of Education and was the first woman and the first African American General Counsel of the Chicago Transit Authority. Throughout Professor Hughes’s career, she has established herself as an expert in civil procedure, constitutional law, ​a​nd refugees and asylum. Upon her retirement from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law as Professor Emerita in 2021–22, a scholarship was endowed in her honor by alumni and administrators.

 


 

Obituary: Joyce A. Hughes
Joyce A. Hughes

Former Professor Joyce A. Hughes ’65, during her time as a Minnesota Law faculty member.