Jan Ginter Deutsch (May 25, 1935 – May 19, 2016) was a Polish-born

American philosopher American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...

and legal scholar best known for his work on the

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

corporate law Corporate law (also known as company law or enterprise law) is the body of law governing the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations and businesses. The term refers to the legal practice of law relating to corpora ...

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...

, and the cultural underpinnings of

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

democracy Democracy (from , ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitiv ...

. Deutsch's most recent book, ''Power and Precedent'' (Vandeplas, 2007), is a summation of his work on

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

jurisprudence over the past few decades.

Biography

He was born in

Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area. As of 2021, Katowice has an official population of 286,960, and a resident population estimate of around 315,000. K ...

Silesia Silesia (see names #Etymology, below) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Silesia, Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at 8, ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. Deutsch was a long-time professor in Yale Law School, and at the time of his death was Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer at that school. He received a B.A. ( Alpheus Henry Snow Prize and Warren Memorial High Scholarship Prize), Ph.D., and J.D. from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

, after which he clerked with

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

justice

Potter Stewart Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an American lawyer and judge who was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1958 to 1981. During his tenure, he made major contributions to criminal justice reform ...

. He practiced law at Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

from 1964 to 1966 (with future Supreme Court justice

Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual an ...

) before joining the Yale Law faculty in 1966. Deutsch's two most famous published works are ''Selling the People's Cadillac: The Edsel and Corporate Responsibility'' (Yale University Press, 1976), a diagnosis of social ills as seen through the lens of a failed automobile, and a 1969 article, "Neutrality, Legitimacy, and the Supreme Court: Some Intersections Between Law and Political Science," 20 Stan. L. Rev. 169, on fundamental rights vs. opinions. Former President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

wrote, in his autobiography, of Deutsch: "He was the only man I'd ever met who ate all of an apple, including the core. He said all the good minerals were there. He was smarter than I was, so I tried it. Once in a while, I still do, with fond memories of Professor Deutsch." Deutsch died on May 19, 2016, at the age of 80.

References

External links

Biography at Yale
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsch, Jan G. 1935 births 2016 deaths American people of Polish-Jewish descent American legal scholars Yale Law School faculty Yale Law School alumni 21st-century American philosophers 20th-century American philosophers Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States 20th-century American lawyers

Biography

See also

References

External links