Harold J. Berman
Encyclopedia
Harold J. Berman was an American legal scholar who was an expert in comparative
, international
and Soviet
/Russian law as well as legal history
, philosophy of law and the intersection of law and religion
. He was a law professor at Harvard Law School
and Emory University School of Law
for more than sixty years, and held the James Barr Ames
Professorship of Law at Harvard before he was appointed as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor
of Law at Emory. He has been described as "one of the great polymath
s of American legal education."
, Berman received a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College
in 1938, and a master’s degree and Juris Doctor
from Yale University
in 1942 and 1947, respectively. He served as a cryptographer in the U.S. Army in the European Theatre of Operations from 1942 to 1945 and received the Bronze Star
for his service.
, where he built a reputation as one of the world's best-known scholars of Soviet law, and held the Story Professorship of Law and later the Ames Professorship of Law. He was a frequent visitor to Russia
as a guest scholar and lecturer, even during the height of the McCarthy
era. In 1958, he represented the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle
in Soviet courts, in an unsuccessful attempt to collect copyright royalties from the government of the USSR.
He left HLS in 1985 for the Emory University School of Law
, where he was the first person to hold the Robert W. Woodruff Professor
ship of Law — the highest honor Emory can bestow upon a faculty member. Berman was one of the pioneers of the study of law and religion. He played an integral role in the development of Emory’s Law and Religion Program, now the Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR), where he served as Senior Fellow. “He was my mentor, but far more important than that, he was one of the few legal scholars in the country willing to write about both law and religion,” said Professor Frank S. Alexander, CSLR founding director, who persuaded Berman to join the faculty at Emory Law after being one of his students at Harvard in the early 1970s.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Berman consulted leading Russian officials on proposed legislation and led seminars for political leaders and academics on the development of legal institutions.
One of the world’s most distinguished scholars of Soviet and post-Soviet law, Berman was a Fellow of The Carter Center
, with a special focus in U.S.-Russian relations. He visited Russia more than 40 times since 1955 as a guest scholar and lecturer on the topic of American law, and he was the founder and co-director of the American Law Center in Moscow, a joint venture of Emory Law and the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. He also took his expertise on Communist and post-Communist law to Eastern Europe and China in recent years, where his writings are well known and widely used.
In recent years, Berman worked to redress global societal inequalities and to establish systems of trust, peace, and justice in developing countries. He co-founded and co-chaired the World Law Institute, an organization that sponsors educational programs in global law. The Institute opened the first Academy of World Law at the Central European University
in Budapest in 2000 and a later comparable program in Moscow.
In 1991, Berman was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by the Catholic University of America; in 1995, the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters
, honoris causa, by the Virginia Theological Seminary
; and in 2000, the degree of Doctor, honoris causa, by the Russian Academy of Sciences Law University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1997.
In 2005, Berman represented American politician and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's
American Center for Law and Justice
in its amicus
appearance in Van Orden v. Perry
, defending the display of a Ten Commandments
memorial on the grounds of the Texas
state capitol.
Books
Articles
, and Visiting Professor Martin E. Marty
. In 2008, Emory Law Journal published a special issue titled In Praise of a Legal Polymath: A Special Issue Dedicated to the Memory of Harold J. Berman (1918–2007).
Comparative law
Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law of different countries. More specifically, it involves study of the different legal systems in existence in the world, including the common law, the civil law, socialist law, Islamic law, Hindu law, and Chinese law...
, international
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
and Soviet
Soviet law
The Law of the Soviet Union—also known as Socialist Law—was the law developed in the Soviet Union following the October Revolution of 1917...
/Russian law as well as legal history
Legal history
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history...
, philosophy of law and the intersection of law and religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
. He was a law professor at Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
and Emory University School of Law
Emory University School of Law
Emory University School of Law is a first-tier US law school that is part of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It is ranked #30 among ABA-approved law schools by the 2012 U.S. News & World Report...
for more than sixty years, and held the James Barr Ames
James Barr Ames
James Barr Ames was a American law educator, who popularized the "case-study" method of teaching law developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell. Ames insisted that legal education should require the study of actual cases instead of abstract principles of law...
Professorship of Law at Harvard before he was appointed as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor
Robert W. Woodruff Professor
The Robert W. Woodruff Professorships are endowed professorships at Emory University, named for philanthropist Robert W. Woodruff. The chairs are Emory University's "most distinguished academic appointments [...] reserved for world-class scholars who are not only proven leaders of their own fields...
of Law at Emory. He has been described as "one of the great polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
s of American legal education."
Early Life & Education
Born in Hartford, ConnecticutConnecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, Berman received a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
in 1938, and a master’s degree and Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1942 and 1947, respectively. He served as a cryptographer in the U.S. Army in the European Theatre of Operations from 1942 to 1945 and received the Bronze Star
Bronze Star Medal
The Bronze Star Medal is a United States Armed Forces individual military decoration that may be awarded for bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service. As a medal it is awarded for merit, and with the "V" for valor device it is awarded for heroism. It is the fourth-highest combat award of the...
for his service.
Career
In 1948 he joined the faculty of Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, where he built a reputation as one of the world's best-known scholars of Soviet law, and held the Story Professorship of Law and later the Ames Professorship of Law. He was a frequent visitor to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
as a guest scholar and lecturer, even during the height of the McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
era. In 1958, he represented the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
in Soviet courts, in an unsuccessful attempt to collect copyright royalties from the government of the USSR.
He left HLS in 1985 for the Emory University School of Law
Emory University School of Law
Emory University School of Law is a first-tier US law school that is part of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It is ranked #30 among ABA-approved law schools by the 2012 U.S. News & World Report...
, where he was the first person to hold the Robert W. Woodruff Professor
Robert W. Woodruff Professor
The Robert W. Woodruff Professorships are endowed professorships at Emory University, named for philanthropist Robert W. Woodruff. The chairs are Emory University's "most distinguished academic appointments [...] reserved for world-class scholars who are not only proven leaders of their own fields...
ship of Law — the highest honor Emory can bestow upon a faculty member. Berman was one of the pioneers of the study of law and religion. He played an integral role in the development of Emory’s Law and Religion Program, now the Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR), where he served as Senior Fellow. “He was my mentor, but far more important than that, he was one of the few legal scholars in the country willing to write about both law and religion,” said Professor Frank S. Alexander, CSLR founding director, who persuaded Berman to join the faculty at Emory Law after being one of his students at Harvard in the early 1970s.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Berman consulted leading Russian officials on proposed legislation and led seminars for political leaders and academics on the development of legal institutions.
One of the world’s most distinguished scholars of Soviet and post-Soviet law, Berman was a Fellow of The Carter Center
Carter Center
The Carter Center is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. In partnership with Emory University, The Carter Center works to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering...
, with a special focus in U.S.-Russian relations. He visited Russia more than 40 times since 1955 as a guest scholar and lecturer on the topic of American law, and he was the founder and co-director of the American Law Center in Moscow, a joint venture of Emory Law and the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. He also took his expertise on Communist and post-Communist law to Eastern Europe and China in recent years, where his writings are well known and widely used.
In recent years, Berman worked to redress global societal inequalities and to establish systems of trust, peace, and justice in developing countries. He co-founded and co-chaired the World Law Institute, an organization that sponsors educational programs in global law. The Institute opened the first Academy of World Law at the Central European University
Central European University
For other uses, see European University Central European University is a graduate-level, English-language university offering degrees in the social sciences, humanities, law, public policy, business management, environmental science, and mathematics...
in Budapest in 2000 and a later comparable program in Moscow.
In 1991, Berman was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by the Catholic University of America; in 1995, the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters
Doctor of Humane Letters
The degree of Doctor of Humane Letters is always conferred as an honorary degree, usually to those who have distinguished themselves in areas other than science, government, literature or religion, which are awarded degrees of Doctor of Science, Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Letters, or Doctor of...
, honoris causa, by the Virginia Theological Seminary
Virginia Theological Seminary
Virginia Theological Seminary , formally called the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, is the largest accredited Episcopal seminary in the United States. Founded in 1818, VTS is situated on an campus in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few miles from downtown Washington, DC. VTS...
; and in 2000, the degree of Doctor, honoris causa, by the Russian Academy of Sciences Law University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1997.
In 2005, Berman represented American politician and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's
Pat Robertson
Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States....
American Center for Law and Justice
American Center for Law and Justice
The American Center for Law & Justice is a conservative Christian, pro-life group that was founded in 1990 by evangelical Pat Robertson.-History:...
in its amicus
Amicus
Amicus was the United Kingdom's second-largest trade union, and the largest private sector union, formed by the merger of Manufacturing Science and Finance, the AEEU agreed in 2001, and two smaller unions, UNIFI and the GPMU...
appearance in Van Orden v. Perry
Van Orden v. Perry
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.In a...
, defending the display of a Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
memorial on the grounds of the Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
state capitol.
Scholarship
A prolific scholar, Berman wrote 25 books and more than 400 scholarly articles, including “Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition” and “The Nature and Functions of Law,” which is in its 6th edition. The law journal Constitutional Commentary described Law And Revolution as "the standard point of departure for work in the field" [of Western legal history]. On his death, the New York Times characterized Berman as "a scholar . . . whose forceful scholarship altered thinking about Western law's origins."Books
- Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
- Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition
- The Nature and Functions of Law
- Soviet criminal law and procedure; the RSFSR codes
- The Interaction of Law and Religion
- Soviet law in action; the recollected cases of a Soviet lawyer (1953) with Boris A. Konstantinovsky
- Soviet Military Law and Administration (1955) with Miroslav Kerner.
- Soviet-American trade in legal perspective : proceedings of a conference of Soviet and American legal scholars (1975)
- Religion and International Law (with Mark Janis)
- Justice in the U.S.S.R.; an interpretation of Soviet law (Harvard, 1963)
Articles
- Introduction to the World Law Institute
Recognition
In March 2004, a symposium of some 500 scholars and students gathered at Emory University School of Law to celebrate the scholarship of its three Robert W. Woodruff Professors of Law, Harold J. Berman, Martha Albertson Fineman, and Michael J. PerryMichael J. Perry
Michael J. Perry is an American legal scholar, specializing in constitutional law, law and religion, law and morality, and human rights. In 2003, he was appointed as Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law, the second person to be appointed to such a chair after Harold J...
, and Visiting Professor Martin E. Marty
Martin E. Marty
Martin Emil Marty is an American Lutheran religious scholar who has written extensively on 19th century and 20th century American religion. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1956, and served as a Lutheran pastor from 1952 to 1962 in the suburbs of Chicago...
. In 2008, Emory Law Journal published a special issue titled In Praise of a Legal Polymath: A Special Issue Dedicated to the Memory of Harold J. Berman (1918–2007).