Max Radin

Max Radin, son of the rabbi Adolph Moses Radin, was born in Kempen, German Empire, he emigrated with his family to the United States and grew up in New York. He received his early education from his father, who, among other things, taught him to speak Latin.[1] Max studied at the City College of New York (BA 1899) and the School of Law at Columbia University (LL.B. 1902). After graduation, he worked as a lawyer and public school teacher in New York and continued his studies at Columbia University, where in 1909, with a thesis on ancient Associations, he was granted a Ph.D. From 1907 he worked at Newton High School. In 1918 he was appointed Instructor of Law at Columbia University.

In 1919, Radin left New York and went to California. In 1922 he married Dorothea Prall, a writer and translator of Russian and Polish poetry.[2] At the University of California, Berkeley, he became a professor of Law, where he remained until his retirement in 1948. He was named the John Henry Boalt Professor of Law in 1940. During his time at Berkeley, he was a visiting professor at the Yale Law School (1940), at Pacific University in Oregon (1946) and Columbia University (1947). In 1949 he was member of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1948 he received a doctorate at Whitman College.

In his work, Radin combined philological research into Roman and civil law with current legal issues. He published more than 700 works, including several professional and popular scientific monographs and manuals. Of Radin's work, Justice William O. Douglas said: "His is part of the tradition of Holmes and Cardozo in his influence on the Law."[3]

• The Legislation of the Greeks and Romans on Corporations. New York 1910 (Dissertation)
• The Jews among the Greeks and Romans. Philadelphia 1915
• Handbook of Roman Law. St. Paul (MN) 1925
• Life of People in Biblical Times. Philadelphia 1929
• The Lawful Pursuit of Gain. Boston / New York 1929
• The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth. Chicago 1931
• Handbook of the Anglo-American Legal History. St. Paul (MN) 1936
• Artikel in Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE), Band XVII,2 (1937) und XVIII,1 (1939): Obligatio, Obsignatio, Obvagulatio, Oratio
• The Law and Mr. Smith. New York 1938
• Marcus Brutus. New York / London 1939
• Manners and Morals of Business. Indianapolis 1939
• Law as Logic and Experience. New Haven / London 1940
• The Day of Reckoning. New York 1943
• The Law and You. New York 1948
• Epicurus, My Master. Chapel Hill (NC) 1949
• Radin’s Law Dictionary. New York 1951

• Ward W. Briggs: Radin, Max. In: Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists. Greenwood Press, Westport CT u. a. 1994, ISBN 0-313-24560-6, S. 514–515.

• Works by or about Max Radin at Internet Archive
• Max Radin at the Database of Classical Scholars