John: Wikipedia

John Henry Merryman studied music at the University of Portland and then chemistry . In 1943 he received a bachelor 's degree from Portland. The following year he received a master 's degree from the University of Notre Dame . Here he also began to study law. In 1947 he completed his legal studies with the title of Juris Doctor (JD). He received a Master of Laws degree from New York University Law School in 1950. In 1955, Merryman received his Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) from New York University.

He taught at Santa Clara University until 1953 and then received a call to Stanford, where he retired in 1986 . Even after his retirement, he gave lectures on the subject of art theft in the spring semester . He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in 1968 and 1969 .

John Henry Merryman was married to the art dealer Nancy Edwards († 2013).

During a stay in Italy in 1962, Merryman met Italian law professors. With Mauro Cappelletti, among others, he then wrote The Italian Legal System, which was finally published in 1967. An Introduction . After he was in Hamburg at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in 1968/1969, Merryman wrote The Civil Law Tradition. An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America .  Together with his student David S. Clark, Merryman developed the work Comparative Law - Western European and Latin American Legal Systems, Cases and Materials, which appeared in 1978.

In 1971, Merryman began giving lectures on art law with the art historian Albert E. Elsen . the Law lecture series. From 1979 , Ethics, and the Visual Arts led to the publication of the casebook with the same name, which was published in five editions until 2007. The lectures were inspired by Merryman's wife's work in the art trade. Merryman founded the Journal of Cultural Property, which began appearing in 1992 .