Robert Carlton Effros

1933 - 2023

EFFROS

ROBERT CARLTON EFFROS

Robert Carlton Effros passed away on Sunday, January 15, 2023. He was 89.



Robert received an undergraduate degree from Harvard College (magna cum laude), a law degree from Harvard Law School (Frankfurter Scholar), and a Master of Laws (taxation) degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Following service in the military, he joined the Legal Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he participated in a variety of domestic and international banking issues addressed by the central bank. In 1963, he joined the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF.) He served as Assistant General Counsel (Legislation) for 35 years until his retirement. He participated in more than forty global staff missions involving legislative drafting and advice on general banking and central banking laws of IMF member countries.



Financial crises invariably have legal components and Robert was often called upon to address these issues in the course of his career. While working for the IMF, he was on loan to the World Bank, participating in a number of its missions as well. His expertise addressed certain issues of the international monetary system relating to gold and the special drawing right. His activities also involved matters in the Middle East.



While most of his career was spent in Washington, Robert was posted to the Paris office of the IMF for over a year (1966-67). During this period, he served as an IMF observer to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Subsequently, he was appointed as an IMF observer to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, where he worked on matters involving bank guarantees and letters of credit, international negotiable instruments, and electronic funds transfers. Overall, he was a participant and observer in more than fifty conferences abroad.



Robert's work involved meeting with governors of central banks, ministers of finance and other key government officials. At the IMF, he organized and chaired a biennial series of seminars for central bank legal advisers on Current Legal Issues Affecting Central Banks. While working in the Legal Department of the IMF, he taught evening courses for more than ten years in domestic and international banking law as Adjunct Professor at American University's Washington College of Law and lectured on these subjects at other universities and at conferences both in the United States and abroad. Following retirement from the IMF, he was appointed a Visiting Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary and Westfield College of the University of London, and subsequently was made a visiting professor at that college. He also served as an adjunct professor at George Mason Law School.



Robert was born in Queens, New York, on December 5, 1933, and raised in Great Neck, NY. He was the eldest of three sons born to Davida (née Gage) and Milton Effros. Robert was predeceased by his children Julie (d. 1969) and Daniel Michael (d. 1985) and his brother Ed (d. 2019). He is survived by his partner, Sheila Platoff, his brother Richard, his daughter Nancy Davida Effros and her son John Greer, and nephews, nieces and cousins.



Services private.