Obituary of Professor Larry A. Bakken

In March, we received the sad news that Larry Bakken had passed away. Larry was a true friend of Bergen, Norway, and our law school. He had Norwegian roots, and his surname means “The hill” when directly translated.

The collaboration between the University of Bergen’s Faculty of Law and Hamline University’s law school started in 1995 when our law school began to host Hamline’s summer program in where they took their law students to Norway.   After a few years Larry became Hamline’s professor in charge of the summer program. In return for the lectures that our faculty offered as part of the summer school, Larry would teach a class on American Law to Bergen law students. Later, he also began to teach Arbitration Theory and Practice, Alternative Dispute Settlements, and Comparative Constitutional Law. Larry was officially employed in a part-time professorship at the University of Bergen from 2012-2016 and continued as an adjunct professor until 2020. The last time he visited Bergen to teach was in March 2020 when the pandemic broke out. Larry arrived in Bergen on the very day when Norway shut down and people were asked to stay at home. Larry and Cathy arrived at their hotel, only to turn around and immediately fly back home where Larry instead offered the teaching online.

Larry was a very popular teacher who our students always liked and appreciated a lot. He had extensive knowledge and a unique ability to convey information, in addition to a human warmth that provided a good learning environment in his classroom.

Hamline University was for many years a sought-after exchange destination for our students. They received unique follow-up from Larry during their stay and had the benefit of extra support in their preparations for their stay abroad, since Larry visited the Faculty of Law in Bergen every semester and could visit with the students also before departure.

In 2020 we had planned a 25th anniversary celebration of the collaboration between Hamline and Bergen, now Mitchell Hamline and Bergen. The celebration had to be postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic. In September 2022 we could finally carry out the joint anniversary seminar which was hosted at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. On this occasion, we also got the opportunity to honor Larry and to thank him for his dedicated work to foster international collaboration. Today, half of the Bergen law students go abroad to study for one or two semesters as part of their legal education, while until mid-1990s only a handful of our students went abroad. Hamline was one of our very first international partner universities, and the collaboration with Hamline in general and with Larry in particular was instrumental in the early beginning of the Bergen Faculty of Law’s work to internationalize the curriculum and the research, and to offer study abroad opportunities to our students.

When Larry visited Bergen, he was always interested in hearing about the Bergen law school’s latest development and in discussing new ideas, and he was always updated on Norwegian social conditions. Numerous students have had Larry as an inspiring teacher, and the faculty has lost a cornerstone in the internationalization work. Our thoughts go to Cathy and the family. We will remember Larry with gratitude.


On behalf of Larry’s colleagues and friends at the University of Bergen,

Karl Harald Søvig, Dean, Ernst Nordtveit, Dean 1999-2009, Asbjørn Strandbakken, Dean 2009-2017