To Test Soviet Law

Harold Berman '38 hopes to crack the Iron Curtain - legally, that is. An authority on Russian law at Harvard Law School, he recently went to Moscow and while there obtained permission to plead a case before the Soviet courts next August.

To test the integrity of Russian law, Berman filed a civil suit for two million rubles on behalf of Adrian Conan Doyle, who is attempting to collect damages for the illegal Russian publication of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries written by his father. Berman's hopes for a favorable legal settlement are based on a section of the Soviet civil code providing that any person or organization "unjustly enriched" at the expense of another is obliged to make restitution. Defendants in the suit will be the Soviet Ministry of Culture and four Russian publishing houses which, it is claimed, have together netted $3,500,000 from the Sherlock Holmes stories.

This is the first known foreign attempt to test the Soviet law in several decades, and Berman states that it is a serious legal action, not just a propaganda move. If necessary, he plans to carry his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Fluent in Russian, Berman was in Moscow the latter part of September and then went to Prague for a UNESCO conference. Graduate of Yale Law School, he has been at Harvard since 1948 and has written five books on Russia and Russian law.