William T. Burke was a legal scholar of marine affairs at the University of Washington. He was born in 1926 and received a B.S. in 1949 and a J.D. in 1953 both from Indiana University, and a J.S.D. in 1959 from Yale University. At Yale, Burke also met and later married Feliciana, a fellow graduate student. He was a lecturer at Yale Law School 1956-1962, associate professor then professor at Ohio State University School of Law 1962-1968, and joined faculty of the University of Washington School of Law in 1968 where he became professor emeritus in 1998. When he arrived at the UW, Burke put together an interdisciplinary group of scholars which evolved into the UW School of Marine Affairs. Burke held a joint appointment with the School of Marine Affairs for the remainder of his career. Burke's first book, The Public Order of the Oceans: A Contemporary International Law of the Sea (Yale University Press, 1962) established him as an authority on the international law of the sea, and area in which he was a scholarly and policy leader throughout his career. William T. Burke died in July 2014 at the age of 87.