Milton Robert Schroeder Jr.

Milton R. Schroeder, who taught generations of ASU law students the inner workings of the Uniform Commercial Code, passed away July 29, 2025, due to complications of myelofibrosis. He passed at home, peacefully, in the presence of his family.

Known to everyone as “Milt”, he joined the faculty of the fledgling law school in Tempe in 1969, in time to see its first class graduate. A professor for more than 40 years, his interests were not limited to the law. Always a follower of ASU sports, he served as ASU’s faculty athletic representative to the Pacific 10 Conference and the NCAA and also served on the NCAA Committee on Infractions during a somewhat tumultuous period in the 1980s. Known for his ability to listen, his remarkable intelligence, and his ability to comprehend every point of view, he was looked to as a source of calm strength when tempers flared.

He was an expert on banking law and regulation. In addition to authoring law review articles, he, for many years, wrote and updated the multi-volume handbook, "The Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions".

His family, however, came first. As half of one of Arizona’s first two-lawyer career marriages, Milt saw to his daughters’ various appointments with doctors, dentists and other activities.

Throughout his nearly 60-year marriage to Mary, he was fiercely supportive of her professional career, encouraging her in private practice and later in her judicial path to leadership in the federal courts.

To spend more time with his children, he took up horseback riding, and it became a source of great satisfaction to him after they left the nest. He and his beloved horse, True Blue Berry, were favorites at Berry’s barn, and they won many trophies and blue ribbons together.

Milt was born in Philadelphia on July 24, 1940, to Milton R. Schroeder and Edna Knoll Schroeder, when his father was beginning his career as an American Baptist minister. The family lived in various cities throughout the Midwest before Milt graduated from high school in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1958. After his college graduation from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he was a student body leader, he attended the Law School of the University of Chicago. There he was the Editor in Chief of the Law Review, met his wife to be, Mary Murphy, and went on to a distinguished clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He practiced law in Washington D.C. briefly with the firm of Sidley and Austin, but a career in teaching at a brand new law school lured him to Arizona State. Always quietly persuasive, he convinced Mary to leave the Department of Justice for a sight-unseen, obscure western metropolitan area that she decided had growth possibilities. They never looked back.

Milt is survived by his wife, the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder, Chief Judge Emerita of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and their two daughters, Caroline of Norman, OK and Kate of Woodland Hills, CA, and two grandsons, Brad and Colson. He also leaves a sister, Janet Miller (Arthur) of Lake Forest, Illinois, and a brother, Ronald (Natalie) of Oxford, Mississippi.

A private memorial is planned. The family suggests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law or Camelot Therapeutic Horsemanship at https://camelotaz.org/.