During a memorial symposium Saturday to celebrate the life of former University law professor Keith Aoki@@CE@@, friends, family and colleagues described a pioneer in the legal world, a talented artist, a loving friend and father, an activist and leader of movements for social justice and, perhaps most pointedly, a man too humble to realize it.
“He did believe he didn’t belong here,” Duke University law professor James Boyle@@CE@@, the keynote speaker for the event, said of Aoki’s relationship to academia, explaining that Aoki thought there was a model for the perfect legal scholar, and he didn’t fit it.
On the surface, this feeling of being an outsider in academia was justified for Aoki, who died April 26 from a prolonged illness.
After spending much of his life as an artist and musician, Aoki approached his scholarship through art. He often used comics as his medium for discussing law rather than lengthy legal articles.
When seeing his contributions to the legal world, however, it is clear that Aoki was a natural fit in academia.
“He provided a bridge into the world of ideas to see how law affects us all,” Lewis & Clark College Law School professor Lydia Pallas Loren @@CE@@said of Aoki’s work, explaining that because of his roots as an artist, Aoki was able to convey complicated legal teachings in a way that was relatable and understandable. “Keith was a bridge spanning the gap between thinking like a lawyer and communicating like an artist.”
During the memorial, speakers from around the country discussed Aoki’s intellectual contributions to four areas of law scholarship: intellectual property law, local government, geography and immigration and Asian-American jurisprudence.
Aoki, who worked at the University for 13 years, was a leader in these fields of law and published some of the most progressive and widely circulated legal texts on these subjects. Most importantly, speakers said he used the law as it was meant to be used: as a way to advocate for social justice.
“He was a dreamer,” Seattle University School of Law professor Maggie Chon@@CE@@ said. “He still believed that justice was possible.”
A unique way that Aoki advocated for social change was his approach to intellectual property law.
Intellectual property law is a broad field, speakers emphasized, and includes everything from protecting artists’ work to advocating for farmers’ rights in the modern agricultural system where seeds can now be copyrighted.
Aoki’s approach to the topic was the idea that art and writing today play on work from the past and that nothing is truly “original.”
“Creativity is not a solitary activity,”  Loren said of Aoki’s approach to his work. “He emphasized connections.”
For Aoki, art, writing and ideas are the product of a community, and by advocating for more public access and broader regulation of copyright creativity, he hoped to simultaneously advocate for freedom and justice.
“What he was writing about in every place was justice or injustice,” said Eric Priest@@CE@@, the event’s moderator and a University assistant law professor, regarding Aoki’s work, explaining that the purpose of his work in copyright law was to ensure that “the little guy had access.”
Aoki took a similar approach to all his fields of study.
However, Aoki did not only fight for the marginalized on paper. A leader in several community activist groups, Aoki also participated in activism directly. In doing so, he set a precedent for his colleagues to use their work to enact change.
In the words of Aoki’s former student Timothy McCormack@@CE@@, “His law review articles were intended to provoke action.”