Magazine authors books

Harold J. Berman. Law and revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition

Harold J. Berman is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University. He is 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 Comparative Legal History (The Western Legal Tradition) and World Law.
Professor Berman is the author of 24 books and more than 300 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) and Faith and Order: The Reconciliation of Law and Religion (1993). He has lectured in many countries to university audiences of faculty and students and to groups of specialists in various academic disciplines - principally legal scholars, historians, sociologists, philosophers, theologians, and political scientists.
He is a fellow of the Nobel Prise Winner President Carter Center of Emory University, with special interests in U.S.-Russian relations. He has written and lectured widely on Russian affairs. 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.
Professor Berman has been active in promoting the teaching of law in the liberal arts curriculum. His book, The Nature and Functions of Law: An Introduction for Students of the Arts and Sciences (1958; 5th ed., 1996, with William R. Greiner and Samir Saliba), is widely used in college courses.
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 is co-founder and co-chairman of the World Law Institute, an educational organization that sponsors educational programs in World Law both for practicing lawyers and for post-graduate law students. Its international staff of professors give 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.
He is a co-founder and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law and Religion and has served on the Board of Directors of the Council on Religion and Law since its formation in 1975. He is a Fellow of the International Academy for Freedom of Religion and Belief. In 1994 he was awarded the Annual Journal of Law & Religion Award, at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, in recognition of his lifetime contributions in the field of law and religion.
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 is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1991, he 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 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.