Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2008
I feel privileged to have been invited to deliver this yearřs FA Mann lecture in succession to a long line of distinguished lawyers who have paid their own tribute to one of the most outstanding German legal émigrés of the 1930s. Francis Mann became a legend in his lifetime for his profound scholarship and his expertise in international and commercial litigation. While still in Germany he had fallen under the spell of the legendary Martin Wolff, the great conflicts lawyer, with whom he was able to resume contact years later in England. Mann himself was to become a leading light in both private and public international law. He had strong views on everything, a few of them decidedly unorthodox. His work The Legal Aspect of Money became a classic, and he died in bed while correcting the proofs of the fifth edition. Happily, Charles Proctor has taken over the mantle of editing the sixth edition, which has now been published by Oxford University Press. Full details of the contributions to English law by Wolff, Mann and other outstanding German émigré lawyers will be found in a collection of essays in a fine new publication, Jurists Uprooted, edited by Sir Jack Beatson and Professor Reinhard Zimmerman.
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