Professor Palmer leaves 20-year legacy at international legal organization

After 20 years as founder and president of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, where he established a platform for top global law scholars to address pressing issues of comparative law, Tulane Law Professor Vernon Palmer is stepping down from his leadership role.

Palmer, who has taught at Tulane Law for more than 50 years, announced the move recently during the Fifth Worldwide Congress of the Society, which was held in Malta, and sponsored by the Tulane Eason-Weinmann Center.

Palmer founded the organization to study and promote the advancement of mixed legal systems.  Mixed Jurisdictions, as they are traditionally understood, stand at the crossroads of Common Law and Civil Law. They frequently encompass other ethnic and religious laws and can be evident in both private and public law, such as criminal, administrative and constitutional law.

The organization created an international laboratory for research and scholarship on this “mixity” which is important in the study of comparative law.

"It has been my great privilege to build and lead the World Society over the last twenty years and I am especially proud that this international organization, with members all over the globe, was founded here at Tulane and incorporated in Louisiana," said Palmer.

Palmer’s leadership role also brought robust discussions and research to the classroom at Tulane Law, said Interim Dean Sally Richardson. 

“Vernon is unquestionably the leading scholar in the world on mixed jurisdictions. His research and leadership in the area have provided fertile ground to study for scholars from Louisiana to Quebec to Scotland to Israel to even Malta," said Dean Richardson, who attended the Malta conference, and presented her own research. "What he has built in the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists is truly remarkable and has had a major impact on the work of many, myself included.” 

Palmer’s contributions to Tulane and the study of international law is vast. The Thomas Pickles Chair and Co-Director of the Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law, Palmer is a world-recognized scholar whose academic accolades span not just his time at Tulane but across continents. He was honored last year as one of the “Five Great Comparatists” of the world’s legal systems by the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL), joining a select few international scholars – and the only American – to be honored.

“To be celebrated by one’s peers as one of the 10 most influential scholars in a discipline is an enormous achievement,” said Law Dean David Meyer said at the time. “The recognition is richly deserved by Vernon and a wonderful affirmation of Tulane Law School’s storied and vital leadership in comparative law.” 

Among his other notable accomplishments: Paris-Dauphine University honored him as a Docteur en Droit Honoris Causa in 2013, and in 2006, French President Jacques Chirac knighted Palmer as a “chevalier” in the French Legion of Honor, the country’s highest civilian award, for his efforts to build stronger ties between the United States and France. Earlier in his career, Palmer received from the French Prime Minister the Palmes Académiques.

A New Orleans native, Palmer earned his law degree at Tulane in 1965, and later received a master’s and PhD in law from Yale and Oxford universities, respectively. He has taught at Tulane since 1970.

Over the years, Palmer has done extensive research abroad in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and Africa.  He is one of three Tulane Law faculty members who are titular members of the International Academy, along with James Gordley, the W.R. Irby Chair in Law, and Guiguo Wang, the Eason Weinmann Chair Emeritus of International and Comparative Law.  Palmer is now serving as a National Reporter for the United States to the Academy’s upcoming international conference in Paraguay.

Throughout the late 80s and early 90s Palmer had a number of stints at universities around the world: He held the Chair of Common Law at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), was a Visiting Professor of Comparative Law at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, the Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, the University of Trent in Trento, Italy, the University of Lausanne, the University of Geneva, and the University of Fribourg.

He has written more than 50 books and articles focusing on his research in comparative law and legal history, and his most recent , The Lost Translators of 1808 and the Birth of Civil Law in Louisiana (Univ. Georgia Press 2021), solves a legal “whodunit” in identifying the pioneers who wrote the English translation of one of Louisiana’s founding documents.  

In 2019, Palmer was instrumental in bringing the most fabled book in Louisiana legal history – the de la Vergne volume – to Tulane as a gift from a benefactor.

This founding document, which Palmer has extensively researched, details not only the laws of the 1808 Louisiana territory but also contains the hand-written notes of its principal codifier.