Peter Simmons served as Dean of Rutgers Law School in Newark from 1975 to 1993. He taught courses specializing in property, land use controls, housing law and policy. Dean Simmons earned his A.B. and LL.B. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was associate editor of the California Law Review. Following graduation, he was an Alvord Law Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. In 1993, he was named a University Professor and taught for the next 20 years until his retirement in 2016 as John M. Payne Scholar Emeritus. Dean Simmons taught at Ohio State, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Illinois, Case Western Reserve, and the University of California. He was a member of the New Jersey Law Revision Commission, the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on the Bar Examination, the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Education, and the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Task Force on Minority Concerns. He was also a trustee of the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education and a Justice of the Peace. 

According to former Rutgers Law School Dean Ron Chen, “He was the Dean of the law school for 17 years, a remarkable tenure that saw major transformations into what our law school is now… He was a fierce advocate for academic freedom and free speech, and was courteous and gracious to all, be they supporter or adversary.”