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For the Filipino football coach, see Hans Smit.

Hans Smit (August 13, 1927 – January 7, 2012) was the Stanley H. Fuld Professor Emeritus of Law at Columbia Law School.[1][2]

Biography

Smit was born in Amsterdam and earned his LL.B. in 1946 and his J.D. in 1949 from the University of Amsterdam. He worked in private practice in The Hague before moving to New York City on a Fulbright scholarship,[3] where he earned a master's degree at Columbia in 1953 and graduated first in his class with an LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1958.[4]

Smit worked for Sullivan & Cromwell for two years before joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 1960 as director of the Project on International Procedure. His students included future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who served as a research associate and associate director of the program.[3][5] He was credited for helping to revise section 1782 of Title 28 of the United States Code.[3][6][7][8]

Smit also founded the Columbia-Leiden-Amsterdam Summer Program, which gave law students the opportunity to travel to the Netherlands for one month of intensive training in American law. He was an expert on European and international law and co-edited The Law of the European Economic Community with Peter E. Herzog. In 1978, Smit was appointed to the Stanley H. Fuld Chair at Columbia Law School.[2]

He was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983.[9] In 1987, he was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion by Queen Beatrix.[3]

Personal life

Smit was the longtime owner of the Schinasi Mansion, the only freestanding single-family mansion in Manhattan.[10][11] He died on January 7, 2012, at the age of 84.[3]

Smit was a water polo player who played for New York Athletic Club.[12]

References

  1. ^ "Hans Smit". www.law.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  2. ^ a b "Professor Hans Smit Remembered as an "Odysseus" at Memorial Service". www.law.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Hans Smit '58, Towering Figure in International Arbitration, Dies at 84". www.law.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  4. ^ "HANS SMIT Obituary (2012) New York Times". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  5. ^ "Tribute to Hans Smit by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg". www.law.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  6. ^ Smit, Hans (1965). "International Litigation under the United States Code". Columbia Law Review. 65 (6): 1015–1046. doi:10.2307/1120565. ISSN 0010-1958. JSTOR 1120565.
  7. ^ Smit, Hans (1998-01-01). "American Assistance to Litigation in Foreign and International Tribunals: Section 1782 of Title 28 of the U.S.C. Revisited". Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce. 25 (1). ISSN 0093-0709.
  8. ^ "Supreme Court Set to Decide Whether Section 1782 Discovery Can Be Compelled in Foreign-Seated Arbitrations". JD Supra. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
  9. ^ "Hans Smit". Digital Web Centre for the History of Science in the Low Countries. 11 September 2023. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
  10. ^ Koppel, Lily (2007-04-03). "An Opulent Home, a Rich Past". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  11. ^ "Lawyerly Lairs: Professor Smit's Uptown Mansion". Above the Law. 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  12. ^ "Water Polo's Connection to Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg". Collegiate Water Polo Association. 2020-09-21. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Smit_(professor)