Brief History
Tulane Law School’s commitment to the study of comparative law, born of the civil law presence in Louisiana, was developed initially through the operation of the Institute of Comparative Law. The Institute was funded by grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and its director, the late Prof. Ferdinand F. Stone, was the principal spokesperson for Tulane’s comparative law program at home and abroad.
Then, in 1981, Jack and Virginia Weinmann gave the law school a generous gift to revitalize its leadership role in comparative law studies. This endowment enabled the University to establish the Eason-Weinmann Chair and Center for Comparative Law. The Eason-Weinmann Chair became the premier academic position in comparative law in the United States, and the Eason-Weinmann Center has established a program of conferences, visiting lectureships, and publications designed to emphasize the importance of comparative law in the United States and the world legal community.
The research interests of the Eason-Weinmann Visiting Professors and those of the Director have enabled the Center to orient its activities toward a study of the role of comparative law in the formulation of transnational law. The growth of international trade and commerce has given the study of comparative law new meaning and a vocation that transcends purely academic paramaters. Law practice in the next decade and 21st century will be internationalized. Comparative training is essential to the emerging transnational bar.
In 1993, Professor A.N. Yiannopoulos was installed as the Center’s Chair. Under his leadership, the Center now houses two institutes of advanced legal study: the Institute of Comparative Law and the Institute of European Studies. In 2005 Professor Vernon Valentine Palmer, the Director of European Legal Studies at the law school, became a Co-Director of the Center.
On November 6-9, 2002, the Eason-Weinmann Center organized the First Worldwide Congress on Mixed Jurisdictions. The Congress was co-sponsored by the Hague Academy of Comparative Law, the International Association of Legal Science, the American Society of Comparative Law and the faculties of twenty-one law schools from countries having a mixed legal system. Delegates who presented papers are among the best-known and influential academics and judges in the United States and abroad. Among them were: The Right Honorable Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, House of Lords; the Honorable Aaron Barak, Chief Justice of Israel; Jose Trias Monge, former Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, and Pascal Calogero, Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. The papers presented at the Congress were published in a special issue of the Tulane Law Review and also in a bound volume. Professor Palmer was elected the president of this organization at its meeting in New Orleans.
In the 2002 academic year, the Eason-Weinmann Center sponsored four distinguished visitors: Professor Ole Lando of Denmark, who taught a mini-course on the Law of the European Union and delivered the Eason-Weinmann endowed lecture; Professor Kenneth Reid of Edinburgh Law School; Professor Gabor Hamza of Budapest University; Professor Emilya Karajovic of Yugoslavia; and Professor Amos Shapira of Tel Aviv University. Each of them delivered a lecture to Tulane law students and the faculty.
In 2003, the Eason Weinmann Center of Comparative law organized and co-sponsored two international Conferences, one in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the other in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Center also organized Colloquia and Conferences at Tulane, including an “Introspective Conference on Louisiana Civil Law.” All professors teaching civil law subjects in Louisiana Law Schools were invited to participate and deliver papers. Those papers have been published in the Tulane Law Review. In the fall of 2003, Dean Symeonides of Willamette Law School delivered the endowed Eason-Weinmann Lecture titled “Choice of Law for Products Liability: Two Decades of Jurisprudence.” The paper was subsequently published in the Tulane Law Review.
In 2004, distinguished Professor Constantine Kerameus of Athens University School of Law taught a mini course on “Comparative Civil Procedure” and in the same year Professor Patrick Glenn of McGill University delivered the endowed Eason-Weinmann Lecture titled “Comparative Legal Traditions”.
In the spring of 2005, Sir Basil Markesinis of Cambridge University delivered a minicourse and also the endowed Eason-Weinmann Lecture titled “The Judge as Comparatist.” Also in the spring of 2005, the Center sponsored visits by two Fulbright scholars, Professor Pinar Akum of Istanbul University, Turkey, and Professor Dimitri Dozhdev of Moscow University Law School, Russia.
After a year of relative inactivity as a result of Hurricane Katrina, Professor Günter Frankenberg of Frankfurt University Law School, Germany, came to Tulane during the 2006-07 academic year to teach a minicourse and to deliver the Eason-Weinmann Lecture on “Torture and Taboo, Comparative Remarks on a Discourse of Law.”
In the fall of 2007, the Center finalized plans for an International Colloquium Celebrating the Bicentennial of the Louisiana Civil Code (1808-2008). The Colloquium, co-sponsored by the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the International Association of Legal Science, the American Society of Comparative Law, the Louisiana State University Law School, and the Loyola University Law School, was held November 19-22, 2008. Honoring the occasion, West Publishing Company presented at the Colloquium a new “Compiled Edition of the Louisiana Civil Codes,” in two volumes edited by Professor A. N. Yiannopoulos of Tulane. In connection with the Colloquium, Professor Antonio Gambaro of Milan University Law school, Italy, delivered the endowed Eason-Weinmann Lecture titled “Property Rights in Comparative Perspective: Why Property is so Ancient and so Durable” and also taught a minicourse on selected institutions of Civil Law Property.
In 2007 and 2008, an unprecedented comparative study of the Scottish and Louisiana private law systems began under the auspices of the Eason Weinmann Center and Edinburgh University Faculty of Law. The study involved 15 academic specialists in private law drawn from three Louisiana and three Scottish universities. A preliminary conference took place in Edinburgh in June 2007, where first drafts were delivered, and a second conference took place in New Orleans on April 3-4, 2008, where the final papers were delivered. The papers will be published by Edinburgh University Press in a volume with Professors Vernon Palmer of Tulane and Elspeth Reid of Edinburgh as editors.
Eason Weimann Annual Lectures
Eason Weimann Contact Information
Eason Weimann International and Comparative Law Conferences