I was sorry to hear that Sharon Byrd died last year – in March 2014 in fact. She was only a couple of weeks younger than me. I completely missed it but I hadn’t been in touch for years. I copy below her bio on the Beck Verlag website. (By the way, you can see forthcoming publications there and I see that new editions of Dietl Lorenz in both DE>EN and EN>DE are announced for 2016).
When I was teaching various classes on English law, legal English and translation at the Instit für Fremdsprachen und Auslandskunde in Erlangen, Sharon was teaching legal English and US law at the university there, and she let my students come to her classes. I sat in once and watched her technique of getting the law students to argue about whether it was acceptable to throw out evidence because it had been gathered in an unreliable way. Although she was particularly interested in criminal law – she taught everything – her greatest interest was Kant. I was impressed and envious of her knowledge of philosophy, and quite incapable of understanding what she and her husband wrote on Kant and criminal law. Her first degree was in philosophy.
Sharon also taught at Augsburg and later for some years at Jena, where she helped her students to great success in moot court competitions.
There’s an obituary (PDF) by Heather M. Roff in the Newsletter of the North American Kant Society.
Prof. Dr. B. Sharon Byrd
Tätigkeitsschwerpunkte
• Angloamerican Jurisprudenc
• Angloamerican law
• Rechtsenglisch (USA)Weitere Tätigkeiten
1996 Hon.-Prof. Univ. Erlangen
Studium
Studium Rechtswissenschaft, Philosophie
Beruflicher Werdegang
• 1969 B. A. Smith College-Department of Philosophy Northhampton Massachusetts/USA
• 1972 J. D. Univ. of California Los Angeles
• 1987 LL. M., 1991 J. S. D. Columbia Univ. New York
• Prof. Univ. Jena
• Leiterin Law & Language Center Univ. JenaVeröffentlichungen
• Einführung in die anglo-amerikanische Rechtssprache 1997, 2. A. 2001
• Anglo-Amerikanisches Vertrags- und Deliktsrecht 1998
• Romain Alfred/Bader Hans Anton/Byrd Sharon B. Wörterbuch der Rechts- und Wirtschaftssprache Teil 1 Englisch-Deutsch, 5. A. 2000
• Romain Alfred/Byrd Sharon B./Thielecke Carola Wörterbuch der Rechts- und Wirtschaftssprache Teil 2 Deutsch-Englisch, 4. A. 2002
I am deeply saddened by this news. I loved Dr. Byrd and all that she did for me in terms of my study of the law.
US citizen and Former student who studied under her in the law and language program in Jena, Germany around 2008. I will never forget her or the program.
Jace Cook
Yes, I can imagine. I only discovered this by accident.