Vivian Curran

Vivian Curran is a member of the American Law Institute and of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and was awarded the Grand Decoration of Merit in Gold for Services Rendered to the Republic of Austria for her work as the United States appointee to the Austrian General Settlement Fund Committee for Nazi-era property compensation. She is the creator of Pitt Law School's innovative Languages for Lawyers program, in which students study foreign languages in a legal context, and of English for Lawyers, in which foreign lawyers study English in a legal context. She is the author and editor of two books, Learning French Through the Law; and Comparative Law: An Introduction; and translated from the German Bernhard Grossfeld, Core Questions of Comparative Law. She is a past Secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law and book review editor of the American Journal of Comparative Law.

Professor Curran has given talks at universities in the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Holland. Her work has appeared in such publications as the Notre Dame Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Boston College Law Review, Alberta Law Review, the American Journal of Comparative Law, Columbia Journal of European Law, Cornell International Law Journal, and in numerous books.

Currently Teaching

• Law and Globalization Seminar (Fall 08)
• The Civil Law Tradition (Fall 08)

Courses Previously Taught

• Estates and Trusts

Selected Publications

Forthcoming Works and Works in Progress:

• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Feminism, Multiculturalism And Comparative Law (manuscript in progress, available).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Between Legal Theory's Scylla & Charybdis: The Constitution Written in the Citizens' Minds (completed manuscript).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Nazi Law and Legal Theory, in 33rd Anniversary Conference Volume of the Annual Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches (forthcoming).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, The Role of Judicial Methods and Legal Scholarship in the Third Reich and Vichy France, in Lawyers, the Holocaust and Democratic Values: Essays in Honor of Max O. Friedlander (1873-1956) (Institute on the Holocaust & the Law forthcoming).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Beyond the Digest, translation from the French of Claude Witz [original title in English] (volume of proceedings of University of Pittsburgh conference on the Vienna Convention, February 2003, Ronald Brand et al. eds.).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Politicizing the Crime Against Humanity: The French Example, 78 Notre Dame Law Review 677 (2003), to be published in condensed version under the title Politicizing the Crime Against Humanity in France’s Courts in Law and Critique (forthcoming).

Books and Chapters:

• On the Shoulders of Schlesinger: The Trento Common Core of European Private Law Project, in  Opening Up European Law (Mauro Bussani & Ugo Mattei, eds., 2007).
• Comparative Law and Language, in Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (ed., Mathias Reimann & Reinhard Zimmermann, Oxford University Press, 2006).
• A Comparative Perspective on the CISG, in Drafting Contracts Under the CISG (ed.s, Ronald Brand & Harry Flechtner, Oxford University Press, 2007).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Core Questions Of Compartive Law, (English translation of Bernhard Großfeld’s Kernfragen der Rechtsvergleichung) (Carolina Academic Press 2005).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Comparative Law: An Introduction (Carolina Academic Press 2002).

Scholarly Articles:

• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Globalization, Legal Transnationalization and Crimes Against Humanity: The Lipietz Case, 56 Am. J. of Comp. L. 363 (2008).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Perspectives actuelles de l'eneignement du droit aux États-Unis en tant que reflet oblique de la méthodologie "common-law," 20 Cahiers de Methodologie Juridique (Jean-Louis Bergel, 2006).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Translation and annotation of Lipietz c. Préfet de la Haust-Garonne, Tribunal Administratif de Toulouse, June 6, 2006.
• Vivan Grosswald Curran, Remembering Law in the Internationalizing World, 34 Hofstra L. Rev. 93 (2005).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, The Role of Foreign Languages for Transnational Legal Education, 23 Penn State Int'l L. Rev. 779 (2005).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Law's Past and Europe's Future, 6 German L.J. 483 (2005).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Racism's Past and Law's Future, 28 Vermont L. Rev. 683 (2004).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, The Politics of Memory/Erinnerungspolitik and the Use and Propriety of Law in the Process of Memory Construction, 14 L. & Critique 309 (2003).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Politicizing the Crime Against Humanity: The French Example, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 677 (2003).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Standing on the Shoulders of Schlesinger: The Trento Common Core of European Private Law Project, 11 Eur. J. Private L. 66 (2003), 2 Global Jurist Frontiers, i.2, Article 2 (2002).

Essays and Other Writings:

• Vivian Grosswald Curran, Book review of Le droit sous Vichy (Durand et al., eds., 2006), vol. 7 H-France Review No. 141 (Nov. , 2007).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran , La Gestation d'un droit transnational face à la globalisation et la "glocalisation", 4 Revue de Sciences Criminelles et Droit Pénal Comparé (2006).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, The Right to Property (USA), in Fundamental Rights in Europe and North America (Albrecht Weber ed., Kluwer International 2003).
• Vivian Grosswald Curran, France’s Far Right and Dubious Vichy Reverberations, 32 Eur. Studies Newsletter 6 (Sept. 2002).

Awards and Honors

• Awarded the Grand Decoration of Merit in Gold for Services Rendered to the Republic of Austria for her work as the United States appointee to the Austrian General Settlement Fund Committee for Nazi-era property compensation (2007).