John: SFGate Memorial

SFGate: John Henry Merryman, law professor and art collector

John Henry Merryman, a Stanford law professor for 62 years and a prime mover in the creation of a renowned sculpture collection on the Stanford campus, has died. Professor Merryman died peacefully at his home in Menlo Park on Aug. 3, surrounded by family, with his dog, Mitzi, licking his hand. He was 95, and the cause of death was old age.

Professor Merryman is credited with creating the field of “art and the law,” among his accomplishments in a career at the law school that ran from 1953 through 2015. As professor emeritus since 1986, he was still teaching his signature course in “stolen art” this spring. According to stepson Leonard Edwards, a retired judge in Santa Clara County, Professor Merryman was the leading American expert in the civil law, which is the legal system in most European and South American countries.

‘Truly a giant’

“He was an extraordinary person and truly a giant,” said Tom Ehrlich, former dean of the Stanford Law School. “Only a handful of law professors reshape an entire field of scholarly inquiry, let alone create a new field. But John did both twice, in comparative law and art and the law.”

John Merryman was born Feb. 25, 1920, in Portland, Ore., where he grew up. He was a graduate of the University of Portland. He then earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago and a law degree from the University of Notre Dame, in 1947. He then earned a master’s and doctorate in law from New York University. With five degrees, he was recruited to the law faculty at Santa Clara University.

At Santa Clara, he met and married Nancy Edwards, who had been divorced, as had he. “That got him fired by the president of Santa Clara,” said Edwards. But that same week, in April 1953, he was hired at Stanford.

He was promoted to full professor in 1960, and named the Nelson Bowman Sweitzer & Marie B. Sweitzer Professor of Law in 1971. Asked to study the civil law system of Italy, he spent two years there and wrote “The Italian Legal System,” a classic text about civil law, and “The Civil Law Tradition,” which has been translated into languages around the world. He later spent a year in Germany, and time in Greece and South America, studying and comparing legal systems. He also recruited foreign law professors to teach comparative law at Stanford.

Getting into art

During his travels, he and his wife began collecting modern art, which led him to create the class “art and the law,” at Stanford Law School, in the 1980s. The course was unique in that Professor Merryman limited enrollment to one-third law students, one-third graduate students in art history and one-third students in the graduate school of business.

The purpose was “to teach future lawyers about all of the legal issues surrounding the purpose and exchange of art, to teach art historians about the legal framework in which they operate, and to teach business students the legal issues relating to buying and selling art,” Edwards says.

In the 1980s, Professor Merryman was appointed by Stanford’s president to a two-person committee to find sculptures to purchase for the campus. His crowning achievement was the acquisition of a 12,000-pound Mark di Suvero sculpture that stands 30 feet tall. Called “The Sieve of Eratosthenes,” it was dedicated to Professor Merryman on his 80th birthday. “Here’s a great work of art by a great artist, and it has my name on it,” he told Stanford Lawyer magazine. “Is there a greater honor?”

Prestigious awards

One that came close was the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Comparative Law, in 2004, when he still had 11 years to go. He also received a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his scholarly work in their legal system.

When he wasn’t overseas, Professor Merryman and his wife and her three sons from her first marriage lived on or near the Stanford campus. He rode his bike to work into his 80s and never wanted to retire.

Professor Merryman was predeceased by his wife, who died at 97 in 2012. Survivors include stepsons Leonard Edwards of Los Altos Hills, Sam Edwards of Redwood City and Bruce Edwards of Gainesville, Fla.

A memorial will be held at 3 p.m. Sept. 21 at Cantor Arts Center. Consistent with Professor Merryman’s dedication to art, donations may be made to the Cantor Arts Center, 328 Lomita Drive, Stanford, CA 94305.