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The Honorable Barry R. Schaller, retired associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court and a noted author and educator, particularly on issues of legal ethics, bioethics, and public policy, died peacefully Sept. 9 surrounded by family. He was 78, and had suffered from a rare form of leukemia. A distinguished jurist, he was known not only for his stint on the state’s highest court (2007 to 2008), but also as a respected judge on the Connecticut Appellate Court, where he served from 1992 to 2007. Before that, Schaller was a trial judge for 18 years.

Schaller was born on Nov. 23, 1938, to Raymond and Mildred Schaller, of Hartford. He was a 1960 graduate of Yale College. Three years later he completed his J.D. at Yale Law School and went into private practice in New Haven. In 1974, Schaller, 35, became the youngest judge to serve on a state court. It was in that role in the 1980s that he presided over one of the state’s most complex cases of civil litigation, when he heard arguments in the trial of Colonial Realty.

In addition to his work on the bench, Schaller served as an adjunct professor at many of the state’s most esteemed colleges and universities, Trinity, Wesleyan, Quinnipiac, and Yale, where he taught an annual fall course at the Yale Law School in appellate law. In 2008, Quinnipiac awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree. He had an abiding interest in bioethics and served on committees addressing these and other medical ethics concerns at both Middlesex Hospital in Middletown and Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford. This work later inspired Schaller’s book Understanding Bioethics and Law, which was published in 2007. Similarly, his work at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics addressing the psychological challenges posed to those who had experienced the rigors of combat led to Veterans on Trial in 2012.

Schaller was an avid baseball fan who once counted A. Bartlett Giamatti, a Yale classmate who eventually became the commissioner of baseball, as a friend. They were avid Red Sox fans together, approving of the philosophical message in “The Field of Dreams.” As an appellate judge, and then as a supreme court justice, he enjoyed pitching in the annual baseball competition between the two courts. The trophy, which is displayed in the winning court foyer each year, has recently been named in his honor.

And Schaller was an admirer of great literature. In 2016, Schaller published his first novel, The Ramadi Affair, and only days before his death, he completed another work of fiction, Flight from Aleppo, which will be published posthumously. His very first book was built on Schaller’s appreciation for literature. In A Vision of American Law: Judging Law, Literature and the Stories We Tell, he examined the legal issues and societal values at the core of some of the greatest works of American literature, including those written by William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck, and many others. There, Schaller lamented how “…in focusing on our differences, we overlook the common ground we share” and he closed with a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “America is woven of many strands…Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many…”

He was a longtime member of Trinity Church, Branford, serving in various capacities over the years, including lector, usher, Sunday school teacher, and vestryman. He also served as a member of the Archibald Hanna Memorial Stained Glass Window Committee and as founding member of the Legacy Society endowment.

Physical fitness mattered to Judge Schaller throughout his lifetime and he enjoyed competing in local marathons, often prevailing over considerably younger competitors.

At his death, Barry Schaller lived with his wife of 38 years, Carol Virginia Covert Schaller, in Guilford. In addition to her, he is survived by a blended family of 7 children: Katherine Schaller Smith, Jane Schaller, Peter Schaller, Karen Colburn, C. Nicole Colburn Hackett, Donna Colburn, and Kristyn Colburn; 16 grandchildren, Madeline Smith, Graham Smith, Caitlin Martone, Melissa Martone, Douglas Martone, Ramon Schaller, Dylan Schaller, Ximena Schaller, Mark Colburn, Lauren Colburn, Kevin Colburn-Murphy, Stephen Hackett, Mallory Hallahan, Charles Mortimer “Chase” Hackett, Audrey Lenda, and Alex Lenda; and 3 great-grandchildren, Sawyer John Hallahan, Jameson Hackett, and Maverick Schaller. He is also survived by a brother-in-law, John Covert, and his wife Dorothy of Dunedin, Florida, as well as a first cousin, Robert Pearson of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to “The Schaller Family Leukemia Research Fund” and mailed to Smilow Cancer Center in care of Amer M. Zeidan, M.D., Fund Director, 37 College St., First Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

A funeral service will be held at Battell Chapel at Yale on Sept. 24 at 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. A Memorial Celebration and reception will follow in the Yale Law School Derald H. Ruttenberg Dining Hall. Enter through 127 Wall St. Please use street parking and lots 78 and 80.

Judge Schaller’s ashes will ultimately be interred in a table-styled columbarium in the Covert-Schaller family plot in Center Cemetery, Branford. The centuries-old table design was inspired by the burial marker of a Covert ancestor, the Rev. Samuel Russell, one of the founders of Yale, in 1701, which is near-by.

Arrangements in the care of the Guilford Funeral Home, 115 Church St., Guilford. To share a memory or leave a message of condolence for the family, please visit www.guilfordfuneralhome.com.