Obituaries

Every institution of higher learning develops a character, a uniqueness that reflects the place, the time and most of all the people who’ve shaped it. Few have done more to mold the ethos of UB School of Law than Professor Kenneth F. Joyce.

By one estimate, Joyce taught more than 12,000 students during his more than 45 years at UB Law. In his courses, generations of aspiring attorneys learned to appreciate both the black-letter law and the philosophical underpinnings of tax law and trusts and estates. Beyond his exceptional teaching, though, was a gentle and generous spirit. He always sought to bring out the best in everyone. Law students responded by consistently naming him Faculty Member of the Year, and SUNY agreed when in 1997 he was named a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Joyce, a Boston native — he never lost the accent — who relocated to Cape Cod in retirement, died Feb. 7 in the company of his family. He was 85.

From his upbringing in a South Boston housing project, Joyce quickly excelled academically, first at Boston College High School, then at Boston College (summa cum laude) and its law school (cum laude), where he was editor in chief of the Boston College Law Review. After graduation, he clerked for a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court judge and at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Following a yearlong master of laws program at Harvard Law, he joined the UB Law faculty in 1964.

“My areas have been death and taxes,” he once told an interviewer. “Sometimes those areas are not seen as really exciting and sexy. It’s not that I can make them come alive. It’s that, it is just not true. There are some interesting conceptual policy problems. … I think the students have to be given the opportunity to involve themselves in a way that they enjoy themselves and enjoy the materials. To try to solve problems — that’s the general, the overall enjoyment they get out of being here. If along the lines you can see some humor in the material, that’s all for the better.”

To further students’ engagement with tax law and courtroom presentation, Joyce organized the inaugural Albert R. Mugel National Tax Moot Court Competition, which has drawn teams from law schools nationwide to UB Law since 1974. He also was instrumental in creating the format for the law school’s intramural Charles S. Desmond Moot Court Competition, a rite of passage for so many second-year law students.

The School of Law and the Law Alumni Association honored Joyce with UB Law’s highest accolade, the Edwin F. Jaeckle Award, in 2003.

In addition to his teaching load, as well as the informal mentorship and guidance he shared with students both in and outside of his classes, Joyce led the New York State Law Revision Commission from 1985 to 2000, and was an active member of a committee that advised the state Legislature on estates, powers and trusts law and the Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act. More recently, he often testified as an expert witness in trustee surcharge litigations, and partnered with his daughter in the law firm of Joyce & Joyce Associates from 1997 to 2023.

Donations in tribute can be made to the Professor Kenneth F. Joyce Excellence in Teaching Fund at UB Law School.