Faust F. Rossi J.D. ’60, Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Techniques, Emeritus, died on Wednesday, March 6 at the age of 91. Rossi was a long-time member of the Cornell Law community and an influential member of the legal world as a scholar in evidence and trial advocacy.
With a nearly 50-year tenure, Rossi is estimated to have taught more students in the Law School than any other professor. Rossi previously achieved the prestigious Roscoe Pound Jacobson Award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy.
Throughout his career, Rossi wrote Evidence for the Trial Lawyer and co-authored the Handbook of New York Evidence, a comprehensive guide to rules and principles of evidence within New York courts.
After graduating from Law School in 1960, Rossi’s legal career began in the United States Department of Justice Honors program — one of the nation’s top federal attorney recruitment programs — where he worked as a trial attorney and later became a litigation partner at a law firm in Rochester.
Rossi joined the Law School faculty in 1966 where he dedicated his career until he retired from the University in 2013. Among Rossi’s most-revered classes were civil procedure, evidence and trial advocacy.
Rossi was also a visiting professor at Central European University in Budapest and a faculty member at Cornell’s summer institute in Paris.
During Rossi’s retirement celebration in 2013, Prof. Stewart J. Schwab, law, who was the dean of the Law School from 2004 to 2014, emphasized Rossi’s distinguished career educating and inspiring law students.
“For 47 years, Cornell Law School has had one of the great treats of teachers in Faust F. Rossi,” Schwab said. “[Rossi] has helped train literally thousands of Cornell Law students and many other lawyers across the country.”
At the same 2013 ceremony, Schwab announced that Rossi’s career at the University would be honored by naming one of its three moot court competitions after him. The Faust F. Rossi Moot Court Competition invites Law Students to argue complex issues and develop oral advocacy skills.
Throughout Rossi’s decades-long service to the University, he became the longest-serving professor in the Law School’s history, as of Schwab’s remarks in 2013, and taught some of the most-enrolled courses in the entire curriculum.
Schwab also read anonymous comments from some of Rossi’s students at the retirement event that praised the professor’s ability to captivate those who were in his classes.
“‘What a wonderful experience to learn the subject from someone with such mastery of the material,’” Schwab said reading a comment from a former student. “‘The best aspect of the class was Mr. Rossi’s colorful use of storytelling and illustrative hypotheticals [which were] reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln.’”
At Rossi’s retirement celebration, Kevin Arquit J.D. ’78 praised the professor’s aptitude for lecturing, emphasizing how he engaged his students while teaching the material.
“It was a joy to be in his classroom,” Arquit said. “He would be able to describe the driest and most arcane subject matter in a way that was enlightening, entertaining and memorable.”
Arquit underscored Rossi’s dedication to the University, explaining that as a law student who lived in a residence hall that oversaw a faculty parking lot, he noticed Rossi was always the first professor to arrive in the morning.
“I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the very first car in the parking lot every day — every single day — was that of Faust Rossi,” Arquit said. “He was there because he was preparing for our classes — that is the kind of dedication you just have to see.”
Stephen C. Robinson ’79 J.D. ’84, who was the former U.S. District Judge from the Southern District of New York, explained how Rossi was not only a phenomenal teacher, but provided law students like himself with the confidence necessary to succeed in a legal career.
“To the extent that I have managed to do some of the things I’ve managed to do in my career, it’s in large part because people thought I was insightful and funny and smart, [but] I was just doing a pale imitation of Faust Rossi,” Robinson said.
Robinson, speaking directly to Rossi’s family at his retirement, further explained how his story is just one of many, as Rossi helped to motivate, encourage and captivate his many students over the years.
“I want [you] to understand how many there are like me,” Robinson said. “How many of us [were impacted] over the years, over the 47 years, over the hundreds and thousands of Cornell students and students elsewhere who [Rossi] touched, and how our lives were made better [because of him].”
Memorial plans have not yet been announced.