Edwin R. Keedy

Edwin R. Keedy began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School in 1939 and served as dean from 1941 to 1945. He taught Associations, Bills and Notes, Criminal Procedure, Equity Pleading and Practice, and Public Service Corporations. Prior to joining the faculty at the Law School, Keedy served as First Secretary of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. As a member of that commission, he investigated the administration of the criminal law in England in 1910. In 1912 he investigated the administration of the criminal law in Scotland under the auspices of President William Howard Taft and Attorney General George W. Wickersham.

Keedy worked with William Mikell on the development of the Model Criminal Code, a mammoth undertaking necessitating the compilation of all existing state criminal laws. As dean, he guided the Law School through the Second World War, one of the institution’s most challenging periods.

The Law School’s annual moot court competition, the “Edwin R. Keedy Cup,” is named in his honor.

Keedy’s portrait was done by Alice Stoddard, who trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now Moore College of Art and Design. She also took classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying with William Merrit Chase and Cecilia Beaux. Stoddard served as a combat artist during World War I, depicting American soldiers on the European front and French refugees. During World War II, she worked as a drafting artist, making airplane schematics for a Philadelphia defense manufacturer. Throughout her long career, she was commissioned to paint prominent Philadelphians.