The Many Exiles of Max Laserson

The life of the Jewish-Russian-Latvian-American legal scholar Max Laserson was punctuated by emigration and exile. This article explores the impact that this experience had on his scholarship. While Laserson’s audience and research topics changed as he moved from place to place, his origins as both a Jew and a native of Latvia, a borderland region between East and West, influenced his scholarship throughout his life. Wherever he lived, he became a “borderland jurist”, an intermediary who transplanted foreign ideas to a local audience.