Allan Gerson, a Washington lawyer and legal scholar who helped pioneer the practice of suing foreign governments in U.S. courts for complicity in terrorism, representing victims’ families in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, died Dec. 1 at his home in the District. He was 74.

The cause was complications of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a degenerative brain disorder, said his wife, cookbook author Joan Nathan.

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“It took a lot of creative lawyering to come up with a system that would enable those victims to recover,” said Beth Van Schaack, an international criminal lawyer who teaches human rights at Stanford Law School. “There was no long history of precedents to draw on,” she added. “They were making stuff up as they went along . . . and now it’s become a standard practice. If a terrorist attack happens, there are lawyers who specialize in this area.”

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