Colleagues and former students of the late Professor David Hortin have quickly and successfully established a permanent endowed fund to honor his decades of service as a teacher and adviser. Professor Hortin, who retired from EMU in 2005 because of failing health, died at age 63 in November 2005.

The David Hortin Public Law Student Fund will endow scholarships for students in public law as well as benefit public law-related activities, including EMU’s successful Mock Trial Program. The fund started with money donated by the Hortin family. The outpouring of respect and contributions reflects the deep effect Professor Hortin had on students during his nearly 40-year career at EMU, which included two decades as faculty adviser to his beloved EMU hockey team.

“He was the most charismatic professor I’ve ever had,” said Jim Auld, who graduated in 1987 and later become an attorney and law firm partner with Professor Hortin. Auld and other admirers remember Professor Hortin presiding over his classroom as a lawyer would before a jury – speaking confidently, articulately and almost always without notes. In fact, Professor Hortin often entered into his Pray-Harrold classrooms holding nothing more than his trademark Big Gulp of pop.

“It didn’t feel like a classroom when he lectured. It was theater,” Auld said.
Professor Hortin started his EMU teaching career in 1966 and his charisma and intellect shaped the careers of thousands of students, including many who went on to become lawyers, elected officials, law enforcement officers and teachers. He helped to create the Department of Political Science’s public law and government major and minor, and became its pre-eminent pre-law adviser.

“David was an absolutely fabulous teacher,” said Dr. Raymond Rosenfeld, head of the political science department and long-term colleague of Professor Hortin. “The quality of what David did in his class was exceptional and well received by other faculty and his students.”

Professor Hortin’s teaching strength was constitutional law, and his “Introduction to the American Legal System” course became a memorable one for students. “It was every bit as challenging as law school,” Auld recalled.

That course launched hundreds toward careers as lawyers. Professor Hortin would later advise them on which law schools to attend after reviewing their law school-entrance exam scores. “There are thousands of lawyers in Michigan who he not only taught, but wrote letters of reference for to get into law school,” Dr. Rosenfeld said.

Professor Hortin was a member of the State Bar of Michigan and the Washtenaw County Bar Association, and practiced law in Ann Arbor for more than 30 years. That combination of practical legal experience and dedication to students allowed him to artfully intertwine theory and practical examples. In 1987, he received the Senior Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. He was a two-time winner (1991, 1998) of the EMU Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award.

At the unanimous recommendation of his friends in the Department of Political Science, the EMU Board of Regents granted him emeritus faculty status posthumously.

“David loved to teach and because of his talent and dedication, people had exceptional allegiance to him,” Dr. Rosenfeld said. “Eastern was an ideal environment for him."

Professor David Hortin, who retired from EMU in 2005 because of failing health, died at age 63 in November 2005.