Edwin Borchard

Edwin Montifiore Borchard (October 17, 1884 – July 22, 1951) was an international legal scholar, jurist, and Sterling Professor at the Yale Law School. He was a leading advocate of innocence reform and compensation for victims of wrongful conviction.

Education

Borchard was born in 1884 in New York City. He attended the College of the City of New York from 1898 to 1902. He graduated with an LL.B. from New York Law School in 1905, a B.A. from Columbia University in 1908, and a Ph.D, from Columbia in 1913, writing a thesis entitled The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad.

Career

He served as the Law Librarian in the Law Library of Congress from 1911 to 1916. Beginning in 1917, he studied and practiced law at the Yale Law School for 34 years and was appointed Sterling Professor of International Law.  He highlighted cases of wrongly convicted people in the US and advocated for their right to compensation in Convicting the Innocent. His work led to the passage of a federal law compensating victims of wrongful conviction in federal courts.  He later served as a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) during the 1944 Korematsu v. United States Supreme Court case.

Borchard's scholarship and public advocacy was very influential in stimulating the adoption of the declaratory judgment procedure in American courts in the 1920s and 1930s, a subject on which he also wrote a book, Declaratory Judgments.

Borchard's other interests included music. He was first violinist in the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and president of the Orchestra Association.

Family

Borchard and his wife Corinne had two daughters, Carol Borchard Sopkin (married to George Sopkin, professor of music at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and cellist of the Fine Arts Quartet in the 1960s and 1970s) and Alice Borchard Couch.

Bibliography

Dissertation

• Borchard, Edwin. (1915). The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad, or The Law of International Claims

Books

• ——. (1923). The Permanent Court of International Justice
• ——. (1932). Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice
• ——; Lage, William Potter. (1937). Neutrality for the United States
• ——. (1941). Declaratory Judgments
• ——. (1946). American Foreign Policy
• ——; Wynne, William H. (1951). State Insolvency and Foreign Bondholders

Papers

• ——. (1913). European Systems Of State Indemnity For Errors of Criminal Justice

Reference works

• ——. (1912). Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Germany. U.S. Government Printing Office
• ——. (1913). The Bibliography of International Law and Continental Law. Government Printing Office
• ——. (1917). Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Government Printing Office