Albert Blaustein

Albert Paul Blaustein ( born October 12, 1921 in Brooklyn, New York City; † August 19, 1994 in Durham, North Carolina ) was an American jurist who was particularly active in the areas of human and civil rights and constitutional law. He served from 1955 to 1992 as a professor at Rutgers University and worked in more than 40 countries in the drafting of new constitutions with.

Life

Albert Blaustein was born in 1921 in Brooklyn and completed his academic training at the University of Michigan, where he earned an AB in 1941. During the Second World War, he served from 1942 to 1946 in the Judge Advocate General's Corps ( JAGC ), the highest judicial authority of the armed forces of the United States. In 1948 he completed his studies with a Juris Doctor from Columbia University, then he was again due to the Korean War from 1950 to 1952 worked for the JAGC. In the following years he worked first as a practicing lawyer in his hometown of New York, where he also served from 1953 to 1955 as an assistant professor and librarian at the New York Law School. From 1955 he was an associate professor and from 1959 to 1992 Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers University, where he also directed the law library from 1959 to 1968. In the 1960s and 1970s, he also worked as a consultant for various agencies and commissions on issues of desegregation as well as at universities in Asia and Africa in the development of law schools and special libraries in the United States.

In addition, Albert Blaustein was involved in a number of countries by political upheavals in the drafting of new constitutions. He designed, among other things, the constitutions of Liberia and Fiji, made ​​major contributions to the constitutions of Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Peru, and designed with about 40 other constitutions, as proposed by Romania and Russia after the fall of communism. He looked a constitution as a unifying element for the ideals and aspirations of a people and as an expression to the world what a country would stand. In addition, he expressed the view that a constitution would contribute to the understanding of the legal, political and moral identity of a country, at the same time, however, must also reflect the culture and history of a country. He also tried to have incorporated Western values ​​in the co-designed by him constitutions. So he undertook in the late 1970s unsuccessfully attempted to convince the country's leadership in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe of them to ensure the equality of women.

Albert Blaustein was married in 1948 and father of two sons and a daughter. He died in 1994 in Durham to a heart attack. The Faculty of Law at Rutgers University gives to commemorate him the Albert P. Blaustein Memorial Award to students with an outstanding publication in one of the published by the Faculty of journals.

Works (selection)

  • The American Lawyer: A Summary of the Survey of the Legal Profession. Chicago 1954
  • Desegregation and the Law: The Meaning and Effect of the School Segregation Cases. New Brunswick 1957
  • Independence Documents of the World. Dobbs Ferry 1977
  • Constitutions That Made History. New York 1988
  • Framing the Modern Constitution: A Checklist. Littleton 1994
Durham (North Carolina) Integrated Authority File
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