In Memoriam
Professor Emeritus Maria Clara Almeda Lopez Campos
(AUGUST 5, 1924 – APRIL 22, 2011)
Maria Clara Almeda Lopez Campos was a legal authority on corporations, insurance and commercial law. She served as a Bar examiner in these legal fields, and contributed to the drafting and revising of laws including the Administrative Code of 1968 and the Corporation Code of 1981. She began her career as legal assistant of the Luzon Stevedoring Co. from 1949-1951 before becoming a full-time professor of law at the University of the Philippines from 1952 to 1981. She retired after 28 years of service in government and was named Emeritus Professor.
The legal profession was literally in her blood: her mother, Natividad Almeda Lopez, was the first woman justice of the Court of Appeals (1960). Finishing Law (cum laude) at UP, and being among the top 20 passers of the Bar examinations, Maria Clara Almeda Lopez was admitted to the Philippine Bar in 1949.
She had six children (three sons and three daughters) with Jose C. Campos, Jr., also UP professor of law (and who served on the administration of the University of the Philippines, before becoming a judge and later a Supreme Court Justice), who was her pre-war sweetheart and classmate at the UP where they were both active student leaders. Together, they co-authored textbooks on corporation law, insurance law and commercial law which remain the current reference texts. The Campos Couple resided on campus from the 1950s as pioneer faculty members of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.
Maria Clara Almeda Lopez Campos finished a Master of Laws at Yale Law School in 1952 and a post-graduate advanced course in Admiralty and Corporate Organization also at Yale (1964-1965). She conducted research and held the Benito Lopez Professional Chair at the UP College of Law from 1974-1978.
Select list of publications
The Corporation Code (1990) and Notes and Selected Cases on Negotiable Instruments Law (5th ed) (1994) with Campos Jr., J.C.
SOURCE: SOCIAL SCIENCE DILIMAN (December 2011) 7:2, 118-119 (with formatting and textual revisions.)