It is with great sadness that we learn that Jacques
Vanderlinden passed away on January 22, 2021 in Brussels. He was a Member of the Advisory Council of Juris Diversitas. Officers and members of
Juris Diversitas express their deep sympathy to his wife Jenny, their two sons
Jacques Jr. and Jean-Paul, and their children.
Professor Emeritus Jacques Vanderlinden received his PhD degree in law from Brussels
Free University (Belgium) in
1956, then his Agrégation de
l’Enseignement supérieur in 1967 when he published his world acclaimed Le
concept de code en Europe occidentale du XIIIe au XIXe siècle,
after the publication by the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences of Belgium of
his Essai sur les juridictions de droit
coutumier dans les territoires d'Afrique centrale in 1959. He started his teaching career at the Free University of Brussels in
1958, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Law, and concluded it in
1992. He then started teaching law at the University of Moncton (New-Brunswick,
Canada), where he has held honorary positions such as Academic Advisor of the Centre international de la common law en
français. He is currently Professor Emeritus of both universities. He is a
full elected fellow of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, of the
International Academy of Comparative Law and a Foreign Fellow of the National
Academy of Italy (Accademia nazionale dei
Lincei).
He has
published some 200 articles and some 30 books and monographs, especially in the
fields of African laws, comparative law, legal history, and legal theory, more
specifically and recently legal pluralism. Here are a few samples, showing the diversity of
his scholarship: Anthropologie juridique,
Paris, Dalloz, 1996; Bibliographie de
droit africain, 1987-1989, Bordeaux, 1991; “À propos de la création du
droit en Afrique - Regards d'un absent”, La
création du droit en Afrique, Paris, Karthala, 1997; Pierre Ryckmans (1891-1959) - Coloniser dans l'honneur, Brussels,
De Boeck-Wesmael, 1994; “What Kind of Lawmaking in a Global World – The Case of
Africa”, Louisiana Law Review, 67
(2007); “Analyzing Property in
Different Societies”, Journal of Civil Law Studies, 1 (2008); “À la rencontre de
l'histoire du droit en Acadie”, Revue de
l'Université de Moncton, 28 (1995); “La réception des droits européens au
Canada”, Revue de la common law en
français, 1996; Se marier en Acadie
française, Moncton, Éditions d'Acadie, 1998; “Vers une conception nouvelle
du pluralisme juridique”, Revue de la
Recherche juridique - Droit prospectif, vol. XVIII (1993); “Trente ans de
longue marche sur la voie du pluralisme juridique”, Cahiers d’anthropologie du droit, II (2004); “Religious laws as
systems of law : a comparatist's view”, Religion,
Law and Tradition : comparative studies in religious law (A. Huxley, ed.),
London, Routledge, 2002; “Une lecture du système normatif de l’Église
catholique par un pluraliste comparatiste aux personnalités multiples”, McGill Law Review, 50 (2005); Comparer les droits, Brussels, Kluwer,
1995; La structure des sytèmes juridiques,
(with Olivier Moréteau), Brussels, Bruylant, 2003; “Qu’est-ce qu’un code ?”,
Les cahiers de droit, 46 (2005).
His most recent publications count a chapter revisiting the
concept of custom, in Comparative Legal
History, O. Moréteau, A. Masferrer & K. Modeer eds., 2019), and “French
Jurisdictional Complexity on the Fringe— Acadia 1667-1710”, Journal of Civil Law Studies, 12 (2019).
With O. Moréteau and Agustín Parise, he wrote the final chapter (1900-Present) of
Western Legal Traditions (Seán Patrick
Donlan, Remco Van Rhee & Aniceto Masferrer eds., Ius Commune Series, Hart,
forthcoming).
He has been
a visiting professor at the Universities of Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Bordeaux, Boston,
Edinburgh, Kigali, London, Louisiana State University, Paris, South Carolina
and has given lectures at many other Universities.
