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Robert Vogel, the attorney for whom this scholarship is named, played a pivotal role in North Dakota’s legal history. His career was a mix of private practice, government service and academia spanning more than 60 years. He was a United States Attorney, a Justice of the Supreme Court and a Professor at UND Law School. But his heart always belonged to private practice at the trial and appellate levels.
In his law practice, he most enjoyed representing the underdog and the underprivileged, not the privileged and powerful; a preference that originated in his upbringing in the North Dakota Nonpartisan League. He was noted for being a clear thinker and a persuasive writer in private practice and on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle described him in a funeral eulogy as “one of the best, if not the best, writer the court has ever had.”
After five years on the Supreme Court, he left the court to become a law professor at UND Law School, where he taught trial and appellate advocacy to many students, quite a few of whom are now members of the Association for Justice. Even as a law professor, he could not resist the practice of law, and he started the Robert Vogel Law Firm, from which he eventually retired to focus on writing an accurate history of the infamous Langer trials of the 1930s. This history was published in 2004 as Unequal Contest: Bill Langer and His Political Enemies.
After his death in early 2005, the Robert Vogel Scholarship was established to assist a second-year UND law student who intends to use his or her legal skills to make the world a better place, promote civil liberties and preserve the right to a trial by jury.
The Application for the Robert Vogel Scholarship is due on march 13, 2026. Applicants and the recipient will be recognized in the spring and the recipient will be recognized at the NDAJ Annual Seminar in Fargo in May.