The UGA School of Law has received a $3.4 million gift from the estate of former Georgia Gov. Carl E. Sanders.
Approximately $2.4 million will be used to create the Carl E. Sanders Law Scholarship Fund, which will provide scholarships to law students. The remainder of the gift will be added to the Carl E. Sanders Chair in Political Leadership Fund, which was established in 2002 to support a faculty position for someone to “educate students about the roles of law and lawyers in shaping public policy and about the role of lawyers in positions of leadership.”
This donation is the largest single gift in the law school’s history and makes the late governor, who earned his law degree from UGA in 1948, the law school’s greatest individual benefactor.
The governor’s wife of 67 years, Betty Foy Sanders, said, “Carl was still a student at the Georgia law school when we were married in 1947. And from there he went on to achieve much for which he always felt deep gratitude to the university, and particularly the law school. … This gift and our prior gifts to the law school reflect our sincere gratitude for what Carl’s legal education and his long association with the law school meant to him and to his legal career.”
During the 1960s, Gov. Sanders said: “The people of Georgia want and deserve nothing short of the best. The University of Georgia School of Law is, therefore, to be one of such excellence that no citizen of Georgia need ever leave (the) state because a superior legal education is available elsewhere.” This statement is etched into the school’s outer wall, and it is evidence of Sanders’ desire to make Georgia Law one of the nation’s finest law schools.
UGA President Jere W. Morehead said, “Gov. Sanders’ ongoing support ensures that the law school’s future will remain part of his legacy for this great state. We are very indebted to this wonderful public servant for all that he has done. He will be missed.”