Symeon C. Symeonides
College of Law Dean and Professor of Law
- LL.M. Harvard University
- S.J.D. Harvard University
- LL.B. (Public Law) Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (Greece), summa cum laude
- LL.B. (Private Law) Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (Greece), summa cum laude
Symeon C. Symeonides began his teaching career in 1976 at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1978, he continued at the Louisiana State University Law Center, where he became the Judge Albert Tate Professor of Law (1987) and Vice Chancellor (1991-97). In January 1999, he was nominated for the Boyd University Professorship, the highest distinction in the LSU System, which he declined to assume the deanship at Willamette. He has lectured widely at several European and American universities and has taught at Tulane, Loyola (New Orleans), Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), and the Universities of Paris-V and Aix-en-Provence (France).
Dean Symeonides has authored or co-authored 19 books and 68 articles, some of which have been published in Greek, German, French, Italian, and Chinese. In 1999, Dean Symeonides was recognized by an unprecedented Resolution of Appreciation of the AALS Section of Conflict of Laws that praised Dean Symeonides for his “enormously influential” publications which “have proved extraordinarily helpful to the members of the Section, other academics, the Bench and the practicing bar.” In 2000, the Louisiana Law Review published A Tribute to Symeon C. Symeonides, a collection of 26 essays authored by prominent American and foreign academics honoring Dean Symeonides for his contributions to the development of comparative law, conflicts law, and civil law. In 2002, Dean Symeonides delivered the prestigious lectures in Private International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law, one of very few US scholars to do so in the Academy’s 75-year history. In 2002, Dean Symeonides received the first Friedrich K. Juenger Prize in Private International Law awarded by the American Society of Comparative Law.
Dean Symeonides is a life member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, vice president and former secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law, former chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Conflict of Laws, and a member of the Order of the Coif, the American Law Institute, the Oregon Law Commission, and the Bartolus Society. He is also a member of the Executive Board of Editors of the Am. J. Comp. L., the Electronic Journal of Comparative Law (Netherlands), and the Yearbook of Private International Law (Switzerland), as well as a scholarly consultant for the 8th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary.
Dean Symeonides has been active in law reform, having drafted Book IV of the Louisiana Civil Code on Conflict of Laws, the new law of leases for the same state, and a Draft Code of Private International Law for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He has also provided legislative advice to the European Union Parliament and the governments of the Russian Federation, Estonia, and Tunisia. Currently he chairs a project to codify Oregon’s conflicts law under the auspices of the Oregon Law Commission. His teaching subjects include Conflict of Laws, Comparative Law, International Litigation and Property.
