On July 18

On this day in ...
... 1900 (110 years ago today), Nathalie Ilyanova Tcherniak was born in Ivanova, Russia. She lived most of her life in France. Soon after her marriage to a fellow Sorbonne law student, Nathalie Sarraute (left) became the 1st woman to be admitted to the Paris bar, practicing from 1926 till about 1940. Thereafter she devoted herself full-time to writing. Sarraute was

one of the earliest practitioners and a leading theorist of the nouveau roman, the French post-World War II “new novel,” or “antinovel,”

as Jean-Paul Sartre dubbed her Portrait d’un inconnu (1947). Sarraute, whom our guest/alumna Vivian Grosswald Curran named an IntLawGrrls transnational foremother, died in Paris on October 19, 1999.

(Prior July 18 posts are here, here, and here.)

Guest blogger: Vivian Grosswald Curran

IntLawGrrls is delighted to welcome as a guest blogger comparative law expert Vivian Grosswald Curran (left), Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pennsylvania, also the home institution of IntLawGrrl Elena Baylis. (photo by Linda Tashbrook)
Vivian's publications include 3 books, Learning French Through the Law (1996), Comparative Law: An Introduction (2002), and Core Questions of Comparative Law (2004, English translation of a work by German law professor Bernhard Grossfeld). The U.S. State Department appointed Vivian as the U.S. member of the Austrian General Settlement Fund Committee for Nazi-era property compensation; in recognition of her efforts last year H.E. Ewa Nowotny, Austria's Ambassador to the United States, presented Vivian with the Grand Decoration of Merit in Gold for Services Rendered to the Republic of Austria, one of the country's highest honors. Vivian, who earned her Ph.D. and J.D. from Columbia University, is a past Secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law and book review editor of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and is a member of the American Law Institute, the International Academy of Comparative Law, and Réseau ID, the Franco-American Network on the Internationalization of Law about which we've posted.
Vivian dedicates her guest post below -- a description of her latest scholarship -- to the late writer Nathalie Sarraute (right). (photo credit) Born Nathalie Ilyanova Tcherniak in 1900 in Russia and raised in France, she studied in France, Germany, and Great Britain. An ardent feminist, Sarraute is best known as a pioneer of the nouveau roman, or "new novel," form in French literature. She also was a lawyer, and was the 1st woman to be admitted to the Paris bar. Vivian writes of Sarraute, who joins other transnational foremothers at right, just below our "visiting from ..." map, "Among her many memorable sayings is one I think particularly useful for legal comparativists and internationalists":

C'est ce qui échappe aux mots que les mots doivent dire.

in English,

It is what escapes words that words must say.

Heartfelt welcome!