HAROLD J. BERMAN: Curriculum vitae

Harold J. Berman was the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University from 1985 to 2007. He was also James Barr Ames Professor of Law, emeritus, at Harvard University, where he taught from 1948 to 1985 and again in 1986 and 1989. His courses include World Law and Comparative Legal History (The Western Legal Tradition).

Professor Berman is the author of 25 books and more than 350 articles. His prize-winning book Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983) has been published in German, French, Chinese, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Italian, and Lithuanian translations. His other books include Justice in the U.S.S.R. (Revised edition, 1963), Faith and Order: The Reconciliation of Law and Religion (1993), Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (2003), and The Nature and Functions of Law (Sixth edition, 2004).

He was a Fellow of The Carter Center of Emory University, with special interest in U.S.-Russian relations. He served on the Executive Committee of the Russian Research Center of Harvard University from 1952 to 1984, and was a member of the Legal Committee of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council from 1974 to 1991.

In 1961-62 Professor Berman spent a year in Moscow, U.S.S.R., as a guest scholar of the Institute of State and Law of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and a lecturer on American law at Moscow University. In the spring semester of 1982 he was again at Moscow State University as a Fulbright lecturer on American law. He has visited Russia more than forty times since 1955.

He was a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, a research center dedicated to studying the religious dimensions of law, the legal dimensions of religion, and the interaction of legal and religious ideas and institutions, norms and practices.

Professor Berman also served as Director of the World Law Institute of Emory University, which conducts research and sponsors educational programs in World Law. Its international staff of professors gives each year a full semester of courses in World Law at the Central European University in Budapest.

Professor Berman was the founder and co-director of the American Law Center in Moscow, a joint venture of Emory Law School and the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. It was a program of instruction in American law for Russian lawyers and was taught by leading American law professors from 1991 to 1997. Some 80 Russian participants completed the program and received Emory University Diplomas and Certificates in American Law.

Born in 1918 in Hartford, Connecticut, Professor Berman received the B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1938. He received a Certificate of Graduate Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1939 and an M.A. degree in History (1942) and a J.D. degree (1947) from Yale University. He served in the United States Army in the European Theatre of Operations from 1942 to 1945, and received the Bronze Star Medal. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1991 Professor Berman was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, emeritus, at Harvard University, honoris causa, by The Catholic University of America; in 1995 the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, by Virginia Theological Seminary; in 1997 the degree of Doctor, honoris causa, by the University of Ghent; and in 2000, the degree of Doctor, honoris causa, by the Russian Academy of Sciences Law University.