Professor Harold G. Maier at Pepperdine.

• Author: Bigham, W. Harold
• Position: Testimonial

A curious concatenation of events brought Hal Maier and me together, once again, in school year 2000-2001 at Malibu and Pepperdine. We had labored concurrently in the Vanderbilt vineyard for a decade and a half, where we were close friends and colleagues on the Vanderbilt Law School faculty--a time of thrilling growth and maturing in the law school. We went our separate ways at the end of the '70s, but on the invitation of a former Vanderbilt student of both of us, Pepperdine Dean Richard Lynn, whom I had recommended for a faculty position at Pepperdine years earlier, Hal Maier was asked to be the Straus Distinguished Visitor for the year.

Knowing as I did his remarkable pedagogical skills and his significant contributions to research in international law, I wanted to make sure his prowess was "bruited about" in the Law School environs. He did not disappoint; Dean Lynn did well when Hal was invited. The students at Malibu enjoyed, and benefited from, the presence of one of the world's leading scholars in the often arcane field of transnational law. And while Hal Maier enjoyed the beach, the Law School, and Southern California, I thoroughly enjoyed being two doors from my old friend, where he always seemed to be doing research and writing--when he was not talking on the phone to some prominent scholar.

Pepperdine and Malibu were the perfect places for indulging in a recently acquired hobby that I knew nothing of: photography. The marine layer, Santa Monica Bay, the beaches, and the campus were all grist for his "shutterbug mill." He took beautiful pictures that all of us enjoyed, attracting even the attention of the larger Malibu art community, to say nothing of the University community that came by just to gaze at his office wall. Just before Christmas, at the twilight of a beautiful Malibu day, as he was leaving the campus, he took a picture of Pepperdine's Phillips Theme Tower and Cross because, as he put it, "Hal (Bigham) and Carol Ann would like that." It now hangs in our den in Brentwood, Tennessee, as do other photographs he lovingly took that year at Malibu. These newly honed artistic skills just about round Hal Maier off as a "Renaissance person."

I must tell you that our relationship was not always so smooth. By "Pepperdine visit time" he knew I was not serious, but nevertheless, I continued to harass him by arguing that there is no...