Leon Lipson, a long-time member of the Law School faculty and a noted scholar in comparative and international law, died on Sept. 20 at his home in New Haven. He was 75 years old.
Professor Lipson specialized in the fields of space law and Soviet law. He coauthored for NASA the book-length Report on the Law of Outer Space, and also contributed an entry on the subject to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. In later years he focused particularly on various aspects of Soviet law, especially the administration of justice, informal law and the rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism. Among his numerous publications were two coedited volumes: "Papers on Soviet Law" and "Law and the Social Sciences" with Yale Law School colleague Stanton Wheeler.
Professor Lipson joined the Yale faculty as an associate professor in 1957 and attained the rank of full professor in 1960. He was appointed the William K. Townsend Professor of Law in 1968 and the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence in 1977. He served as the associate provost of the University 1965-68.
Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1921, Professor Lipson received a bachelor's degree in political theory and a master's degree in Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University. He worked as an economic and political intelligence analyst with the Foreign Economic Administration, the Department of State and the War Department. His government service culminated in his work as a policy and liaison officer with the Office of Military Government for Germany U.S..
Professor Lipson returned to Harvard to attend law school and graduated cum laude in 1950. He also served as note editor of the Harvard Law Review. Before beginning a full-time academic career at Yale, he practiced law for six years with Cleary, Gottlieb, Friendly and Cox in New York City, Paris and Washington, D.C. While in Washington, D.C., he also served as a part-time lecturer in law at Washington College of Law.
Over the course of his life, Professor Lipson served on the boards of many professional organizations, and was chair of the Social Science Research Council, the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and the Academic Advisory Board of the RAND Graduate Institute.
He is survived by his wife, Rita Lipson, a senior lecturer in Slavic languages and literatures at Yale; three children, James Ezra, Abigail and Michael Aaron Lipson; three stepchildren, Alex, Yvette and Peter Brackman; and two grandchildren. He was predeceased by his first wife, the former Dorothy Ann Rapoport.