Leon Lipson papers

Leon Lipson was born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts in 1921. He attended Harvard University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in political theory in 1941 and a master’s in Soviet languages and literature in 1943. After working at the Foreign Economic Administration, the Department of State and the War Department during World War II, he returned to Harvard Law School, where he was on the Harvard Law Review and received a law degree in 1950. Upon graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Friendly and Cox for six years before being recruited for the Yale Law School faculty as an associate professor in 1956. Lipson became a full professor in 1960, William K. Townsend Professor in 1967, and Henry R. Luce Professor in Jurisprudence in 1977, also serving as associate provost of Yale, 1965-1968. After his retirement in 1992, he was appointed Paul C. Tsai Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale. Professor Lipson specialized in the study of Soviet law and space law. Among his professional writings are Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on the Law of Outer Space” with Nicholas B. Katzenbach, and two publications, Papers on Soviet Law and Law and the Social Sciences, which he edited with Stanton Wheeler. Lipson was married to the former Dorothy Ann Rapoport, with whom he had three children: James Ezra, Abigail, and Michael Aaron. Following the death of his first wife, he married Rita Brackman and gained three stepchildren: Alex, Yvette, and Peter Brackman. Lipson died in New Haven, Connecticut on September 20, 1996.