George Haskins
George Lee Haskins (February 13, 1915 – October 4, 1991) was an American legal scholar and the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He was born and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of medievalist Charles Homer Haskins and Clare (Allen) Haskins.
He attended Phillips Exeter Academy (1931), earned an AB summa cum laude from Harvard University (1935), and received a JD from Harvard Law School (1942). He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Henry Fellow at Merton College, Oxford.
During World War II, Haskins served in military intelligence in the War Department General Staff and rose to the rank of major. He received the Army Commendation Medal with oak leaf clusters and the George Medal from the British government.
At Penn, he held the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professorship, the oldest endowed chair at the law school, and taught there for 39 years. He wrote at least ten books and 82 articles. He was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and served as president of the American Society for Legal History.
Haskins died on October 4, 1991, at his home in Hancock, Maine, at age 76.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:30 (CET).