Rudolf Schlesinger (1909–1996). Życie i idea

Abstract

Rudolf Schlesinger (1909–1996) was a brilliant German American scholar of Jewish descent. He was born and raised in Germany, where he received his first law education. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he had left his homeland and moved to the US where he became a teacher at Cornell Law School. In recognition of his work at Cornell, Schlesinger received the prestigious William Nelson Cromwell Professorship. In 1975 he left Cornell for Hastings College of the Law, where he continued research there for two decades until his retirement in 1994. Rudolf Schlesinger is well known for his new comparative law methodology, which was elaborated during his stay at Cornell Law School. This methodology, known as case method, was described by Schlesinger in his monumental work Formation of Contracts: A Study of the Common Core of Legal Systems (1968). Schlesinger’s ultimate goal in this project, was to identify and define similarities between legal systems. In Schlesinger mind these similarities, known as Common Core, should play a key role in development of both private and international law.