Biography
As I look back on a long and satisfying life, several formative aspects of that life stand out in my mind: two years as a college age student in Europe, my extended family, the varied aspects of a fulfilling legal career, and my foray into academia.
My European adventure utterly and irrevocably transformed my life. That experience included two years as a student (in France–Montpellier and Paris–and then in Geneva, Switzerland), my extended solo travel (by hitchhiking) throughout Europe, a broad exposure to a rich cultural experience, and my interaction with the patterns of daily life in cosmopolitan Europe.
As for my family, I have two daughters, five grandchildren and two great grandchildren. While they are dispersed around the country, I strive to maintain regular contact by phone or text and visit with them at every opportunity, including a couple of winters ago when I rented a large house in Florida where the whole clan (four generations!) gathered. I have often travelled with my daughters, sometimes my grandchildren, to destinations in the US, Europe, and Asia, including to such exotic places as Vietnam, Taiwan, and India.
On the professional side, following my graduation from law school (NYU), I began my legal career as an Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office headed by the legendary (in New York legal circles) Frank Hogan. In that capacity, I prepared and tried innumerable cases, including in my last several years in the Office, major homicide cases. Following that work, I engaged in a range of legal activity, including a stint in private practice with a firm that specialized in representing airlines in labor matters. That law firm work led to my employment in the corporate world where I served for an extended period as Assistant General Counsel for United Airlines. In that capacity I managed the company’s litigation world-wide, served as the principal legal overseer of the company’s labor and employment issues, and acted as its antitrust compliance officer.
Upon my retirement from United, I entered the academic world at Northwestern University Law School. During my stint at Northwestern, located within the Bluhm Legal Clinic as the Senior Counsel of the Center for International Human Rights, my specialty was public international law. During my service at Northwestern, I taught an international law survey course and several specialized doctrinal courses (three of which I developed from scratch) on such topics as international humanitarian law, comparative international law, transitional justice, and the law and practice of the United Nations. Upon my retirement as a full time NU professor, I have worked, as an emeritus professor, with students as their faculty advisor for Independent Study projects.
As I said at the law school retirement event for me and other retirees, the words of Tennyson that captured my imagination then, and which I resolved would be my watchwords going forward in life, were: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.”
s-sawyer@law.northwestern.edu