Bob Bastress for Supreme Court
Bob Bastress, a candidate for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, is best known as Professor of Law. He has been a faculty member at West Virginia University College of Law since 1978. Professor Bastress is an authority on Constitutional Law, focusing special attention on the First Amendment and the West Virginia Constitution. Courses he has taught include Constitutional Law, Labor and Employment law, Local Government Law, and Legal Skills. Bob Bastress presently serves as the John W. Fisher, II Professor of Law.
Professor Bastress has written the only book published to date that focuses on the West Virginia Constitution, a nationally prominent textbook on counseling and negotiating, textbooks for his courses on West Virginia Constitutional Law and on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and numerous other professional publications.
Litigation
Since joining the Bar in 1974 and while at W.V.U., Bastress has also been an active litigator. His work has included a defense of the State's solid waste laws from attack by out-of-state garbage interests, efforts to fight closures of community schools, advocating workplace privacy rights of employees, and promoting rights of equal access to the political process.
Public Service
Most of his work has been done pro bono publico, that is, for the good of the public and without charge. Professor Bastress has also done considerable public service through his work for nonprofits, having served as President or Chair of the West Virginia Senior Legal Services, the North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society, and the West Virginia State Bar Committee on Delivery of Legal Service to the Poor.
For his work, Bastress has received public service awards from the West Virginia State Bar, the Mountain State Bar, and the West Virginia University College of Law. The University has also bestowed on him outstanding teaching and outstanding scholarship awards.
Background
Professor Bastress earned a B.A. degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and his law degree from Vanderbilt. Following graduation from law school, he worked as a staff attorney and then a directing attorney for the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of 
Kentucky. He then attended Temple University, where he became an Abraham Freedman Fellow and Instructor in Law while earning a Masters in Law degree.
He is married to Barbara Evans Fleischauer, a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He has two children; his son Rob clerks for a federal judge in Charleston and his daughter Sarah is a senior at Morgantown High School. Bob and Barbara grow a large garden every year at their home on the Evans family farm on Baker's Ridge in Morgantown. Bob is also a long-time member of the Honest Abe's Used Car softball team.
