Keith Beyler | SIU

Keith H. Beyler has been a member of the SIU law faculty since 1982. He grew up in Carbondale, Illinois, graduated from Princeton University in 1969 (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1974 (cum laude and Order of the Coif). He then clerked for Justice James Cobey of the California Court of Appeals and was in private practice for seven years at O'Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles. While there he worked primarily on antitrust and commercial fraud cases. He also had the honor of trying a case for King Vidor, one Hollywood’s most famous old-time film directors.

Professor Beyler teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, and Conflict of Laws. He has a special interest in personal jurisdiction, having published articles on the subject, one of which led to a revision of the Illinois personal jurisdiction statute.

Professor Beyler has been very active in service to the Illinois legal profession. He was on the Illinois State Bar Association Civil Practice and Procedure Section Council for eight years, serving as Chair in 1989; he then was on the editorial board of the Illinois Bar Journal for four years, serving as Editor-in-Chief in 1992-93; and he served as reporter for the biannual Allerton House Conferences from 1984 to 1992. In 1995, the Illinois Supreme Court appointed him as the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee’s Professor-Reporter, serving as an advisor and drafter in making revisions to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules. On the local level, he served for many years as secretary to the Southern Illinois American Inn of Court.

Professor Beyler is active in community service. For more than a decade, he served as an officer or director of Green Earth, Inc., a local land trust dedicated to the preservation of natural areas in the Carbondale area.