Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Milton Katz, Teacher, Dies at 87; Was Law Expert and U.S. Envoy

Milton Katz, Teacher, Dies at 87; Was Law Expert and U.S. Envoy
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
August 11, 1995, Section A, Page 22Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

Milton Katz, a teacher and scholar of international law at Harvard Law School and former administrator of the United States Marshall Plan in Europe, died on Wednesday at Beth Israel Hospital in Brookline, Mass. He was 87 and lived in Cambridge, Mass.

Professor Katz joined the school in 1939 as a lecturer and served as the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law from 1954 to 1978, when he reached emeritus status. During one of his leaves of absence for Government service he was made an Ambassador and Special United States Representative in Europe in the early 1950's, succeeding W. Averell Harriman.

His role as director of the Economic Cooperation Administration -- popularly known as the Marshall Plan, after Secretary of State George C. Marshall -- established his international reputation. Previously, he had worked for the New Deal, the War Production Board, the reorganization that unified the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense, and the Ford Foundation.

Professor Katz was born in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In between he took part in an anthropological expedition across Central Africa for the Peabody Museum at Harvard.

Before he returned to Harvard, he was a lawyer for the Reconstruction Finance Administration and the National Recovery Administration, special counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission and special assistant to the United States Attorney General.

He was appointed a professor at Harvard in 1940. Besides international law, he was versed in administrative and constitutional law and taught courses in torts, civil procedure and the regulation of elections and campaign financing as well.

He helped to establish International Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School and directed it from 1954 to 1974. In those years the law school began its initial expansion into international law, adding several professorships and a building and library to accommodate it.

Upon his retirement from Harvard, he became Distinguished Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, where he taught until January. He was the author of many articles and books and an officer in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the World Peace Foundation.

Professor Katz is survived by his wife of 62 years, Vivian Greenberg Katz; three sons, John, of Hartsdale, N.Y., Robert, of Cambridge, and Peter, of Newton, Mass., and five grandchildren.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the National edition with the headline: Milton Katz, Teacher, Dies at 87; Was Law Expert and U.S. Envoy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT