Joseph Sweeney (1933-2020)

Biography

Sweeney joined Fordham Law School as a professor of law in the fall of 1966 and helped found the Fordham International Law Journal(FILJ) a decade later.

The FILJ remains one of the most-read international law periodicals in the world and is one of the most frequently cited student-edited legal publications dedicated to the study of international law. The FILJ office was named in honor of Sweeney when the new Law School building was completed in 2014 on the Lincoln Center campus.

During his 47 years as a professor, Sweeney taught a number of courses at Fordham Law, including International Business Transactions, International Conflict Dispute Resolution, History of the Supreme Court, Torts, and Admiralty. He also taught students through the Fordham summer program in Ireland in the program’s first five years.

He served under five Fordham presidents and five Law School deans, and he taught approximately 15,000 students during his time on the faculty. Sweeney was also the author of a number of books, including The Law of Marine Collision, with Nicholas Healy, and The Life and Times of Arthur Browne in Ireland and America 1756-1805. He was also the co-author of Aviation Law: Cases, Law, and Related Sources. 

Sweeney grew up in Boston and attended Boston Latin School. He graduated from Harvard University in 1954. He earned a J.D. from Boston University in 1957 and an LL.M. in international law from Columbia University in 1963. 

Prior to becoming part of the Fordham Law family, Sweeney joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and became a JAG officer in 1957. He served on the legal staff of the Destroyer Force of the Atlantic Fleet at Newport, principally working as counsel to formal investigations of collisions, groundings, fires, and explosions.

Sweeney was later selected to be an instructor at the Naval Justice School where he taught Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Administrative Law, and Substantive Criminal Law. Leaving active duty in June 1962, he practiced law part-time at Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens and later worked as a full-time associate for the firm from 1963 to 1966.

In 1970, Sweeney assisted the late Ambassador Richard D. Kearney on answers from the Department of State to questionnaires from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This work was the beginning of his apprenticeship as a diplomat over the next 25 years, representing the United States at three diplomatic conferences. 

Sweeney also spent eight years negotiating and drafting the 1978 Hamburg Rules, which 33 nations ratified or acceded to. He was the visiting E.S. Land Professor of Maritime Affairs at Naval War College in 1972 and a distinguished visiting professor at U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1982.

“Joe had an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. He was a leading expert on maritime law specifically, which grew out of his career in the Navy JAG Corps, but he had a deep love for the law overall and legal history and an insatiable curiosity.”

-Dean Michael M. Martin

Selected Publications

Guantanamo and U.S. Law, 30 Fordham Int'l L.J. 673 (2006)

The Just War Ethic in International Law, 27 Fordham Int'l L.J. 1865 (2003)

An Overview of Commercial Salvage Principles in the Context of Marine Archaeology, 30 J. Mar. L. & Com. 185 (1999)

Collisions Involving Tugs and Tows, 70 Tul. L. Rev. 581 (1995)

Compromise Provisions Regarding In Rem Procedures, 27 Am. J. Comp. L. 407 (1979)