This week our In Custodia Legis team celebrated Nobel Week with the Swedes and millions of others around the globe. The ten individual 2015 Nobel Laureates were honored in the Nobel Prize Award ceremony yesterday in Stockholm, Sweden, with the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded in Oslo, Norway on Saturday, December 12.
If you are enthusiastic about awards that recognize persons with “beautiful minds,” who made major scientific discoveries, produced outstanding literary work or contributed significantly to world peace, we hope you will enjoy reading our posts on Nobel. As law enthusiasts, working at the great Law Library of Congress, we chose to highlight the legal aspects of Nobel’s will as well as to identify Nobel Laureates who were lawyers.
Elin wrote a fascinating post about Alfred Nobel’s will and Alfred Nobel the man. She reported on Nobel’s dislike of lawyers as a possible reason for drafting the famous will that established the prestigious awards without any professional legal assistance. Although lawyers were not consulted by Nobel in drafting his will, they have certainly been among recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. In two consecutive posts this week, Jennifer highlighted 33 Nobel Laureates who had formal legal training and have greatly influenced international politics and diplomacy to bring about peace.
Has Nobel’s will changed the world? Has it changed Nobel’s legacy as the inventor of dynamite? What were the legal challenges associated with executing his will? Who were Nobel Laureates that have had legal education? You can find answers to these and other related questions by reading Elin’s post, Alfred Nobel’s Will: A Legal Document that Might Have Changed the World and a Man’s Legacy , and Jennifer’s Nobel Prize-Winning Lawyers: Part One and Part Two.