Erik Jayme, 8 June 1934 – 1 May 2024

The author of this post is Martin Gebauer (Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen).

Erik Jayme passed away on 1 May 2024, just five weeks before his expected celebration of his ninetieth birthday.

He was born on 8 June 1934, in Montréal, in the francophone Canadian province of Québec. His parents were married on Christmas 1930 by a Protestant priest in Detroit, Michigan. His father was domiciled in Ontario and his mother was living in Wisconsin. His mother was Norwegian and his father was a German Huguenot of French origin. By getting married in a religious ceremony, his mother acquired German nationality and later remained a dual citizen. This status, as Erik Jayme mentioned sometimes, compelled him to engage in Private International Law.

After studying both art history and law in Frankfurt and Munich, Erik Jayme wrote his doctoral thesis mainly during the years 1958-1959 in Pavia. His first monograph on the challenges in the application of Italian law by German courts (“Spannungen bei der Anwendung italienischen Familienrechts durch deutsche Gerichte”) was published in 1961 and established a very special relationship with Italy for the rest of his life. Erik Jayme became increasingly fascinated by the Italian history of legal thought in Private International Law and Comparative Law. This interest predominantly focused on the nineteenth century and scholars like Emerico Amari, Giuseppe Pisanelli, and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini (and their respective relationships with Carl Josef Anton Mittermaier from Heidelberg), but also extended to earlier epochs like the sixteenth century and the statute law of cities like Ferrara within the legal pluralism of the time. He was convinced that history is always present in Private International Law like in no other area of law. Later, he developed another close relationship with the law of the Lusophone countries.

Individual persons and their cultural identity in cross-border legal relationships became a guiding theme in Erik Jayme’s research, certainly influenced by his understanding of nineteenth-century Italian scholars like Mancini. Private interests, not the sovereignty of a state or governmental interests, were regarded as the guiding principles of Private International Law. Taking seriously the diversity of persons and legal systems within their cultural contexts was a reason for him to introduce postmodern thoughts to Comparative Law and Private International Law, primarily in his Hague Lectures of 1995.

A completely different world opened to Erik Jayme when he arrived in the United States in 1965 and explored the ongoing “conflicts revolution” from the inside. His LL.M. thesis on “Interspousal Immunity – Revolution and Counterrevolution in American Conflicts Law” was published in the Southern California Law Review in 1967, a paper with 293 footnotes. What was originally intended as a short-term stay for the LL.M. program at Berkeley turned into a fruitful collaboration and close friendship with Albert Armin Ehrenzweig (1906-1974). Ehrenzweig passed away fifty years ago on 4 June 1974. The first volume of Ehrenzweig’s “Private International Law” was published in 1967 (General Part), the second volume (Jurisdiction, Judgments, Persons) was published as Ehrenzweig/Jayme in 1973, and the third volume (Obligations) after Ehrenzweig’s death in 1977. Unlike Mancini, Ehrenzweig was skeptical of any kind of “superlaw” and sought to derive conflicts rules from the substantive legal system of the lex fori and its policies (in an open continuity with Carl Georg von Wächter). However, substantive elements of foreign law could also be incorporated as “local data”.  Erik Jayme introduced similar approaches by considering the cross-border situation not only in the application of conflicts rules but also in the interpretation and adaptation of the applicable substantive laws.

After his habilitation in Mainz (1969), Erik Jayme became a professor first in Münster, then in Munich (1974), and finally in Heidelberg (1983) where he spent more than 40 years of his life. His ease of learning foreign languages and his diplomatic, cultivated, and open-minded demeanor combined with his strong humanity facilitated discourse and exchange on the international stage. His door at the Heidelberg Institute on Augustinergasse 9 was always open to foreign scholars and students. He received five honorary doctorates from universities on different continents and was a member of even more international academies. He served as President of the Institut de Droit International from 1997 to 1999 and as Vice-President of the Hague Academy of International Law from 2004 to 2016. However, he most enjoyed teaching and continued to offer courses to students until the last winter term, specifically in Art Law and International Family Law.

Erik Jayme was fascinated by contrasts, and he consistently crossed borders, not only between cultures, languages, and legal systems but also across interdisciplinary boundaries. From Ehrenzweig, he learned to view the law not only from its internal perspective but also from an external viewpoint. Since Erik Jayme had a strong passion for the arts, it was only logical that he would contribute to developing art law and become one of its leading experts. Another contrast was the relationship between theory and practice. Anyone who had the privilege of attending his lectures or courses was introduced to legal issues through concrete cases. This inductive approach was a feature not only of his teaching but also of his research and scholarship. He often began with the phrase, “The following considerations come from a practical case,” as seen in his first law review publication (StAZ Das Standesamt 1963, 130: “Die folgenden Erörterungen gehen von einem praktischen Fall aus”). The inductive method of approaching legal issues was likely one of the reasons why his contributions were often remarkably concise. Another reason was his extraordinary ability to express complex thoughts succinctly. An eight-page contribution in a Liber Amicorum or a “Festschrift” could lay the groundwork for at least a doctoral thesis.

Twenty years after his own doctoral thesis, he co-founded a new law review in 1981 with the same publishing house (Gieseking), which had a significant impact on future discussions in Private International Law both in Germany and abroad. The review, titled “Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts” (“IPRax”), was a play on words, combining the abbreviation for Private International Law (PIL or IPR in German) with a focus on practical application over theory. Still in the 1980s, Erik Jayme, together with Christian Kohler, drafted the annual reports in IPRax on the current developments in European Private International Law. These annual reports now serve as historical documents reflecting the dynamic evolution of European PIL over the last four decades. The reports included titles such as “Europäisches Kollisionsrecht 1999 – Die Abendstunde der Staatsverträge” (“European Conflict of Laws 1999 – the Evening Hour of the Treaties,” IPRax 1999, 401).

Erik Jayme once wrote that amidst the whirl of small facts, one should always try to concentrate on the basic ideas that direct a certain field of law. He suggested that one way to do this is to look at history. Not only in his legal thought did he always combine the particular and the details with some basic idea and grassroots perspective, but the same approach applied to his passion for art and his unique and open-minded way of interacting with individuals. In a profoundly human manner, he understood the people around him, and years later, he would remember small details from their lives. We will always treasure his way of viewing the world with well-meaning humor, a special, fine irony that included himself, and a rich portion of human understanding.