E.R. Lanier Lectures in Vienna

Vienna, Austria, was the venue of a lecture at the end of May by Monticello’s Professor E. R. Lanier.

Joined on the podium by Dr. Matthias Neumayr, a sitting Justice of the Austrian Supreme Court, Mr. Lanier reviewed commonalities and distinctions in the development of the English common law shared by Anglo-American states and the Roman civil law tradition which is the basis of modern legal structures in continental Europe.

Professor Lanier’s remarks were delivered on May 29, in conjunction with a visit to the Austrian Supreme Court (Oberstes Gerichtshof) by 50 participants of the Georgia State University-sponsored Summer Academy in International Commercial Arbitration.

A press announcement released by the Supreme Court following the lecture emphasized that the central focus of the remarks by Justice Neumeyr and Professor Lanier was judicial formation and education, a special interest of Professor Lanier who has served as a member of the faculty at the College of Law at Georgia State University for over 35 years and who, for more than two decades, sits as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia.

GSU’s Summer Academy in International Commercial Arbitration was established in 1994 and annually brings 40 to 50 American law students from across the country to Europe for professional studies in alternative dispute resolution. Program venues include arbitration and conventional courts in Austria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Croatia.

“I too serve as a judge in Vienna,” Professor Lanier noted in private remarks to Justice Neumeyr before his formal statement at the Supreme Court, “but my service is as a Memphis Barbecue Network-certified judge at the greatest barbecue competition in the entire world , the Big Pig Jig in Vienna, Georgia, down in Dooly County.

“I take on that awesome responsibility once a year each fall, and I would not trade that experience for a permanent seat on the Austrian Supreme Court!”

The Austrian host – citizen of a nation well known in Europe for its love of all things having to do with pork – responded in agreement. “Austrians will eat any part of a pig,” Lanier noted later, “and I do mean any part. These people are okay by me.”

Professor Lanier serves as Judge of the Municipal Court of Monticello and resides on College Street in Monticello with his wife, Patti Jordan Lanier.