Maine Law celebrated the establishment of the Martin A. Rogoff Professorship of Law on Oct. 5, 2026. The new professorship honors the extraordinary career, life, and legacy of Professor Emeritus Martin Rogoff. As part of the celebration, Maine Law President and Dean Leigh Saufley announced Professor Jeffrey Maine as the professorship’s inaugural recipient.
The endowed professorship was made possible through an outpouring of support from the Maine Law community. In just six months, 60 donors contributed to establish the fund, creating an enduring investment in Maine Law’s faculty and honoring a professor whose influence spanned more than five decades.
“For more than five decades, Marty has been an extraordinary part of the intellectual life of this law school,” Dean Saufley said. “And generations of Maine Law students have known him as a professor who took both ideas and his responsibility to his students very seriously.”
Rogoff joined the Maine Law faculty in 1972. He began his career at the law school teaching tax and corporate law before his scholarship and teaching expanded into international law, comparative law, jurisprudence and legal history. Over the decades, he also helped develop Maine Law’s relationship with the legal community in France, creating opportunities for Maine Law students to study abroad and for French law students to study in Maine.
His commitment to students remained constant throughout that career. Saufley recalled a recent conversation with Rogoff in which he described keeping his office door literally open. If a student stopped by while he was writing, the writing could wait because, as Rogoff put it, students were “the principal focus of the job.”
Rogoff’s son, attorney Ben Gideon, provided a thoughtful overview of Professor Rogoff’s widely respected international scholarship. As he reflected on his father’s decision to build his life and career in Maine rather than pursue opportunities elsewhere, he said:
“More than anyone, I have been the beneficiary of his choice to devote his life to his family, the study of the law, this institution, and the state of Maine,” Gideon said.
Rather than leave Maine for the wider world, Gideon said, his father brought the wider world to Maine through his teaching, scholarship and international relationships.
“Dad, I am glad you made the choices you made,” Gideon said. “Your family is better for them, your students are better for them, Maine Law is better for them.”
Ira Waldman ’76, a former student and longtime friend of Rogoff, also spoke about Rogoff’s influence on his career and the lasting impact of his teaching, adding that the endowment of a professorship is a testament to Rogoff’s profound influence on the Maine legal community.
“Congratulations to all of us who now get to bask in Marty’s glory,” he said.
Professor Rogoff described the establishment of the professorship as a culmination of his career at Maine Law and expressed gratitude for the freedom he had to pursue his intellectual interests and develop new courses and programs.
He also emphasized the importance of endowed professorships as tools for recruiting and retaining exceptional faculty. That made the selection of the professorship’s first recipient especially meaningful.
“One of the most important things I did at this law school was convincing Jeff Maine to come to the law school,” Rogoff said. “I saw right away he was a good person, and he has had a wonderful career here.”
Saufley then announced Professor Maine, Maine Law’s Vice Dean and Provost and a nationally recognized tax law scholar, as the inaugural Martin Rogoff Professor of Law.
“An endowed professorship is, of course, an honor bestowed on an individual. But it is also a statement about what an institution values,” Saufley said. “With the Martin Rogoff Professorship, we are saying that we value intellectual curiosity and rigorous scholarship. We value exceptional teaching and mentorship. We value service and leadership.”
Maine joined Maine Law as a visiting professor in 2003 and became a professor of law the following year. Over more than two decades, he has become one of the country’s leading scholars in tax law, particularly at the intersection of federal taxation and intellectual property.
He has written numerous books and articles, while training generations of tax lawyers at Maine Law. He has also taken on significant institutional leadership responsibilities in his role as Vice Dean and Provost.
For Maine, being the inaugural holder of a professorship bearing Rogoff’s name carries significance beyond the distinction itself.
“Throughout my time here, I have constantly looked to Marty’s example,” Maine added. “Finding someone whose philosophy so closely aligns with your own on scholarship and teaching is rare, but to have that person as a colleague and mentor is a true gift.”
The connection between the two professors made Professor Maine a particularly fitting inaugural recipient. Their careers have reflected many of the same values: a belief that rigorous scholarship makes for better teaching, a deep commitment to students and a willingness to invest in the institution far beyond the classroom. Now, the professorship that carries Rogoff’s name will also carry forward that shared legacy through a colleague he helped bring to Maine Law.
