In memoriam: Professor Harold G. Maier.

PositionVanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law founder and Law School professor - Testimonial

Harold G. (Hal) Maier, a renowned scholar of international law and founder of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, died August 24 following a long illness. Professor Maier spent his entire academic career at Vanderbilt Law School. He was 77.

Maier was an internationally recognized authority on the application of U.S. regulatory legislation to foreign business activity. Over the course of his distinguished career, he worked on advanced research at the Brookings Institution and the Max-Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, and was a visiting professor at Pepperdine University, the University of Pennsylvania, George Washington University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Georgia. He served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of International Law and the American Journal of Comparative Law. In 1983-84, he was counselor on international law to the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, and on several occasions he testified before congressional committees and as an expert witness in domestic courts.

Maier founded the student-edited Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law in 1967 and served as its faculty adviser until his retirement in 2005. He was appointed the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Professor of Law in 1988. He was a co-author of Public International Law in a Nutshell (with Thomas Buergenthal, West Publishing) and dozens of journal articles and book chapters, some written in German, which he spoke fluently.

Hired in 1965 to develop Vanderbilt's international law program, Maier sought to establish a program to train students interested in an international legal practice and to enable scholarship in international legal studies that would also appeal to a broader base of students. "Only a program that combined a full curriculum, diverse faculty members, and broad-based student activities could accomplish all three goals," he wrote in a 1992 article for the Vanderbilt Lawyer magazine. With few resources other than his formidable intellect and force of will, Maier helped form the student International Law Society as well the Journal of Transnational Law and used these early successes to establish a firm foundation for future growth of international studies at Vanderbilt. During his four-decade career, he worked with six deans to build and support a thriving program while also serving the university as chair of the faculty senate, on two provost search committees, and...

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