Peter B. Maggs

Research Professor
Clifford M. and Bette A. Carney Chair Emeritus

About

Professor Maggs graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School with honors. After law school, he attended Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University), as a graduate student and later served as an associate at the Harvard Russian Research Center and as a research associate at Harvard Law School.

Professor Maggs is a leading expert in the entire body of Russian law and also studies the legal systems of other former Soviet Republics. Since 1994, he has served as a consultant for USAID contractors and the World Bank on numerous law reform projects in the former Soviet Union, including legislative drafting and educational projects in Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Ukraine. He has also completed projects on Soviet law for the U.S. Department of State, and served as director and legal reform specialist for the Rule of Law Consortium in Washington, D.C.

Professor Maggs has four times been a Fulbright Scholar, most recently in spring 2002 as Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Trento in Italy. He has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has co-authored more than 20 books and numerous articles on Russian and Soviet law, American law of unfair trade practices, consumer protection, and computer law. A number of editions of a translation of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which he and co-author Alexei Zhiltsov prepared and edited, have been published in Russia and the United States. In addition, he has been active in international intellectual property law reform, co-authoring a book, Intelektual’naia sobstvennost’ (Intellectual Property), Moscow 2001. In 2011 he published “Islamic Banking in Kazakhstan Law,” in the Review of Central and East European Law. In 2012 he published a book on Kazakhstan company law and coauthored a book on Russian law and a casebook on Trademark and Unfair Competition.

In 2006, Professor Maggs received the Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement, the highest award bestowed upon a University of Illinois faculty member for scholarship and service within the international community.

Professor Maggs has served as a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School He is a member of the American Law Institute and served on advisory committees for the development of Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition, for the revision of Articles 2 and 2A of the Uniform Commercial Code, the Principles of Software Contracts, and the Restatement (Third) of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration.

Education

AB, JD Harvard University

Areas of Expertise

Commercial Law
Contracts
Intellectual Property
International and Comparative Law
International Commercial Arbitration
Internet Law and Regulation
Russian Law
U.S. and International Trademark and Copyright Law

Courses

Contracts
International Commercial Arbitration
Law Teaching Practicum
Trademark & Unfair Competition

Selected Publications

Translator and editor (with cotranslator and coeditor Alexei Zhilstov), Civil Code of the Russian Federation, First Part, as of May 23, 2016 (with introduction by Olga Kozyr, Peter Maggs, and Alexei Zhiltsov). Book version: Createspace, 2016. Electronic Version: Kindle, 2016.

Translator and editor (with cotranslator and coeditor Alexei Zhilstov), Civil Code of the Russian Federation, First Part, as of January 31, 2016 (with introduction by Olga Kozyr, Peter Maggs, and Alexei Zhiltsov). Book version: Createspace, 2016. Electronic Version: Kindle, 2016.

(with coauthors Olga Schwartz, William Burnham and the late Gennady Danilenko), Law and Legal System of the Russian Federation, 6th Ed. (Huntington, N.Y.: Juris Publishing, 2015).

(with coauthors John Soma and the late James Sprowl, Computer and Internet Law, 4th ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: West 2013).

(with coauthor Roger Schechter), Trademark and Unfair Competition, Cases and Comments, 7th ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: West, 2012).

(with coauthors William Burnham and the late Gennady Danilenko), Law and Legal System of the Russian Federation, 5th Ed. (Huntington, N.Y.: Juris Publishing, 2012).

Author of the introduction and translator, Kazakhstan Law on Joint-Stock Company (2012). This book is published in three forms: electronic for the Amazon Kindle, electronic for Barnes & Noble Nook, and paperback by Createspace. The paperback version has the English translation and Russian text of the law on parallel pages.

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