‘A brilliant scholar’: Longtime UK College of Law professor dies
Longtime University of Kentucky Professor Mark Kightlinger has died, the J. David Rosenberg College of Law announced Thursday.
He died “peacefully” on Thursday morning and the cause of his death has not been made public yet, the college said. Kightlinger was a professor at UK for more than 20 years.
“We are deeply saddened about the loss of Professor Mark Kightlinger, an esteemed educator and thoughtful mentor to our students and alumni and a great friend of my faculty colleagues at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law,” said Jim Duff, interim dean of the college, in a statement.
Kightlinger joined the college in 2004 after practicing law at Covington & Burling, LLP in Washington, D.C. He taught administrative and constitutional law and served as a faculty adviser to the Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture and Natural Resources Law.
“He was a brilliant scholar, specializing in law and philosophy, international law, administrative law and internet law,” Duff said. “The law school community will miss seeing Mark Kightlinger reading while walking the halls of the law building.”
Colten Jones, senior associate at Spencer Fane law firm and a UK alunii, said he took Kightlinger’s international law and international trade law classes, spending half of his days with him during the fall of 2015.
“He was such a fine professor,” Jones said. “He would wear blue jeans and a T-shirt to teach class, very laid back, down-to-earth.”
For Jones, having Kightlinger around made his days more enjoyable, which brought a balance to the “high pressure” of a law school routine.
“He would put his students at ease. He related to us pretty well,” Jones said. “We would talk about current events or movies that were coming out and stuff that normal people talk about.”
At the same time, Jones said he learned a lot from Kightlinger, who was well-known in the department for his vast knowledge on a wide range of complex legal and philosophical subjects.
Kightlinger’s kindness extended beyond his students — those who encountered him used to feel the same connection.
Christopher Stewart is one of them.
Although he wasn’t one of his students, Stewart, a former UK law student who is totally blind and now assistant general counsel at the U.S. AbilityOne Commission, said the way he was treated by Kightlinger will never be forgotten.
During law school, Stewart had a guide dog named Baron. Every time Kightlinger would get close to Baron, he would ask permission to pat her. Through those interactions, new conversations would frequently come up, Stewart said.
“I got to know a little bit about him as a person, as a lawyer, as a professor,” Stewart said. “I came to understand a little bit about his worldview and even got his thoughts on legal issues of the day.”
Stewart said Kightlinger wasn’t intimidating, but very approachable — and to him, that made the professor truly stand out.
“The fact that he made a point of reaching out and making a connection to both me and my guide dog meant a lot to me and it said a lot about him — not just as a professor but as a person,” Stewart said. “I will miss him a lot.”
The UK Rosenberg College of Law said they extend condolences to Kightlinger’s family as “he touched countless lives both inside and outside of the classroom and will be missed.”
