John Henry Merryman (1920-2015)

I have just learned from Sean Patrick Donlan that long-time and beloved Stanford Law professor John Henry Merryman passed away.  He wrote extensively about art law.  I am most familiar work on repatriation of cultural property, most notably the Elgin Marbles.  One of the things that interested me about his argument is that it seems -- am I allowed to say this -- socialist.  He argued that the Elgin Marbles had become the property of the world and that they should remain in England where more people would see them than if they were returned to Greece.  Property rights, it seemed, were to be assigned to the country where the property would be seen by the most people (or do the most good).  That has, of course, a certain appeal; but my thought was that it is somewhat unfair to take away Greece's claim in this one case.  Thinking on Merryman's work this evening makes me hope I have the chance to revisit it someday.

Merryman began his teaching career at Santa Clara in 1948 and moved to Stanford in 1953 and then retired from there in 1986.  

Comments

[Enrique Guerra Pujol]

Professor Merryman also wrote a little book on "The Civil Law Tradition," a book I assigned to my students when I began teaching my first course on "The Evolution and Development of the Institutions of the Civil Law" in Ponce, P.R. back in 1998

[Mark Levin]

He also wrote fine work on the Civil Law Tradition.

I highly recommend his shorter paperback co-authored in the third edition with Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo (Stanford University Press) for my Law and Society in Japan students each year.

Even while the East Asian nations of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are geographically far from the Civil Law tradition's Roman roots, the book provides a surprisingly quick route for Anglo-American trained lawyers to understand many key elements of those systems, and of course for understanding law on the European continent and throughout Latin America.

Each time I pick it up, I'm also always impressed by the succinctness and clarity of the writing in the text. We can all aspire to do so well.

[Ann Tweedy]

The description of his theory on the Elgin Marbles reminds me a bit of the European justifications for confiscating Native property in the New World a la de Vattel. I haven't read Professor Merryman's theory, but it seems to that it would often be the case that those who are trying to justify their right to property to which they do not hold title would often see themselves as being positioned to make a more beneficial use.