Comparative Law Scholar Passes Away

MAURO CAPPELLETTI, Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus, died in Italy on November 1. He was 76. A native of Italy, Cappelletti joined the Stanford Law School faculty in 1970, became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1985, and was named to the law school’s Shelton Professorship in 1987. He became emeritus in 1996.

“Mauro Cappelletti was one of the early European legal scholars to bring to the United States European ideas about American law and to Europe American ideas about European law,” said Larry D. Kramer, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean. “He was an internationally recognized leader in a number of important areas of legal scholarship. Stanford Law School greatly mourns his loss.”

Born in 1927 in Folgaria, Italy, Cappelletti attended the University of Florence, where he earned a law degree with high honors in 1952. That same year, he was admitted to the Italian bar and began a three-year clerkship to its president. In 1956, he earned a second Florence degree, the “libera docenza” (in university teaching), after which he spent two years as a research fellow at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany. 

Cappelletti began his teaching career in 1957 as a professor at the University of  Macerata School of Law and moved to the University of Florence in 1962, where he also founded and for 14 years directed the Florence Institute of Comparative Law. At the European University Institute, which he joined as a professor of law in 1976, he chaired the law department from 1977 to 1979, in 1983, and again from 1985 to 1986.

From 1979 to 1985, he directed and contributed to a landmark project that resulted in a multivolume series, Integration Through Law: Europe and the American Federal Experience. The project, which consisted of more than 20 coordinated studies conducted by joint teams of European and American scholars, examined similarities and converging trends in the legal systems of the various nations of Europe. He also studied the availability of legal aid to the poor and indigent, the subject of another major project conducted from 1973 to 1979 and published in four volumes as Access to Justice.

Beginning in 1978, Cappelletti became, in addition, a member of the Standing Committee to Reform the Italian Code of Civil Procedure. “Research that looks only backward is mere erudition,” he was quoted as saying. “Research ripens into scholarship only when it is able to fulfill the important task of contributing to a better understanding of present and actual problems and realities, thus providing a rational basis for building the future.” 

Honored in many countries, Cappelletti was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, a fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Academy of Italy, and a member of the Institut de France. His wife, Mimma, died on January 2. He is survived by his daughter, Matelda.

 

PROFESSOR EMERITUS BILL LAZIER DEAD AT 73

William C. Lazier, Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business, Emeritus, died on December 23 in Newport Beach, California. He was 73. A highly respected figure in business and investment law, with decades of corporate experience across a range of industries, the 1957 Stanford MBA graduate was an expert in the law and practice of accounting.

In 1982, Lazier returned to Stanford to lecture at the Graduate School of Business, where he taught management of smaller companies and real estate for the next 11 years. Drawing on his business school teaching experience, he became a lecturer in accounting and small business management at Stanford Law School in 1990, and was named to the law school’s Nancy and Charles Munger Professorship in Business in 1993. He became emeritus in 2002. At the time of his death, he was developing a new accounting course for 2005.

“Bill cared deeply about his work, his students, and everything he did,” said James C. Collins (MBA ’83), a colleague at the business school with whom Lazier coauthored Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company and Managing the Small to Midsized Company: Concepts and Cases in the 1990s.

“Bill Lazier was a dedicated and inspiring teacher who had an unusual gift for bringing his broad business experience to life in the classroom,” said Larry D. Kramer, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean. “He was also a wonderful and generous person. The many colleagues and students who worked and studied with Bill at Stanford over the past 20 years will miss him.”

Lazier was the general partner of Bristol Investment Company, which he founded in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy; son, David Lazier; daughter Linda Escalera; daughter Ann Mahowald; and nine grandchildren.