Dates

• Existence: 1935 - 2018

Biography

Jacob Bruno Tanzer was born in Longview, Washington, in 1935. His family moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1945. He attended the University of Oregon, Stanford University, and Reed College. He earned a bachelor of art degree from the University of Oregon in 1956, and a law degree from the University of Oregon in 1959. He practiced law in Portland for a few years before deciding that he would rather be a public prosecutor. In 1962, he moved to Washington, D.C., where Tanzer worked for the U.S. Department of Justice in the organized crime division. In 1964, he was the criminal law advisor for the team investigating the 1964 murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi. Later that year, he returned to Portland and worked as a Multnomah County deputy district attorney until 1969, when he was appointed Oregon’s first solicitor general. In 1971, he became the first director of the Oregon Department of Human Services. He was appointed to the Oregon Court of Appeals by Governor Tom McCall in 1973. He resigned in 1980 and was immediately appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court by Governor Vic Atiyeh. Although he won an election later that year for a six-year term on that court, he resigned in 1982 and returned to private practice in Portland. He was named Legal Citizen of the Year in 2014 by the Classroom Law Project.

Tanzer was married twice. He and Miriam Albert were married in 1962; they later had four children. In 1972, Tanzer and Miriam Albert divorced, and in 1974, he and Elaine Rhine were married. Together, they founded Elephants Delicatessen in Portland in 1979. He died in 2018.

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