Stanley Bernard Lubman

Stanley B. Lubman died peacefully at home in Berkeley, California on Tuesday, October 29 from complications related to Parkinson's. Born in the Bronx on March 29, 1934. Stanley was a graduate of The Bronx High School of Science, Columbia College and Columbia Law School, where he received a JD, LLM and JSD. He went on to become a pioneering expert in Chinese law and law reform. Stanley was the recipient of a two-year fellowship from Columbia Law School to study at Ecole de Droit, University of Paris, and a 4-year fellowship from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations to study Chinese language and study and research Chinese Law at Columbia and in Hong Kong. His interest in China began in summer '59 in Vienna, where he observed the Chinese delegation at the Communist Youth Festival being held for the first time outside the Communist bloc. He spent much of the 1959-60 academic year in Paris reading about China rather than French law.

Stanley taught law at UC Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford law schools. He also lectured at University of Oxford, University of Heidelberg, and SOAS at the University of London. He produced a wide range of scholarship covering such varied topics as dispute resolution, administrative law, and American policy toward China. Among his more notable publications are China's Legal Reforms; Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao; and Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice. Stanley also wrote frequently about Chinese legal issues in the media, including in a recurring online Wall Street Journal column.

In addition to teaching and mentoring many of today's leading Western and Chinese scholars and practitioners of Chinese law, Stanley also maintained a full-time China law practice, first on his own and then with major law firms, advising Western companies on their business dealings with China. Stanley was a consultant and head of the China Group at Allen & Overy; partner with Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges; partner and special counsel with Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe. He was also an advisor to The Asia Foundation.

Stanley relished life and was determined not to be like John Maynard Keynes, who reportedly said that his only regret in life is "that I did not drink more champagne."



Stanley is survived by his wife, Judith (ne e Metzger); his children, Sarah and James, and four grandchildren: Sam Lubman, Anna Dardia, Ben Dardia, and Sylvia Lubman.