SALT LAKE CITY, UT, August 24, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Edwin Brown Firmage has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Edwin Brown Firmage is now retired as the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of law, emeritus, after teaching constitutional and international law at the University of Utah College in Salt Lake City since 1970. A Hinckley Fellow at Brigham Young University, he graduated with high honors in political science and history and received a master's degree in history from Brigham Young University. He was a National Honors Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School and served on the editorial board of the Chicago Law Review. Dr. Firmage received the Doctor of Law, Master of Law, and Doctor of Jurisprudence degrees from Chicago.
Dr. Firmage started in politics as a member of the staff and White House fellow for Vice President Hubert Humphrey. In that capacity, he worked with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the Urban League, and with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Firmage helped draft and develop legislation leading to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, and served as United Nations visiting scholar, attending sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York and the arms control negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland from 1970 to 1971. After leaving the White House, he was asked to establish a legal system for all Native American tribes west of the Mississippi. In his capacity as a political figure, Dr. Firmage helped lead the successful opposition to the basing of MX missiles in Utah and Nevada.
In addition to teaching at the University of Utah, Dr. Firmage served as fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard Law School from 1974 to 1975. He received the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award in 1977 and the Brigham Young University Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award in 1978. The University of Utah invited Dr. Firmage to deliver the annual Reynolds Lecture, Ends and Means in Conflict, in October 1987. In 1988, he was awarded the Charles Redd Prize by the Utah Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters for outstanding contributions in the humanities and social sciences during the past five years. Dr. Firmage was the recipient of the 1989 Governor's Award in the Humanities, given by the Utah Endownment for the Humanities. He delivered the McDougall lecture, Reconciliation, at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City on March 7, 1989. Dr. Firmage was the 1991 recipient of the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, the highest academic award given by the University of Utah. He delivered the Lane Lecture at Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1992, and was a visiting professor from August to December of 1992 at Bentham House, University College, at the University of London teaching constitutional law.
Dr. Firmage has also contributed to a number of published works. With the late Francis Wormuth, he wrote "To Chain the Dog of War: The War Power of Congress in History and Law", with the second edition published in 1989 and revised in 2001 by the University of Illinois Press. Professor Firmage's book with Collin Mangrum, "Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints", the first legal history of the Mormon experience in the nineteenth century, was awarded the 1989 First Place Prize of the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Awards and for Best Book for the Year given by the Honors Society of the National Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States. "Zion in the Courts" was revised in a paperback edition in 2001. Additionally, he co-wrote "Religion and Law: Biblical, Jewish and Islamic Perspectives" with J. Welch and B. Weiss, released by Eisenbraun's in 1990. Edwin B. Firmage, et al. are the editors of "The Internaitonal Legal System, Fifth Edition, Foundation Press, New York, which was released in Fall of 2001.
Dr. Firmage was named Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law by the University of Utah in January 1990. He was a participant in a Fulbright Seminar in the Soviet Union during the summer of 1990, traveling throughout the country, attending lectures and meetings with Soviet governmental leaders, scholars, and leaders of emerging political parties. He worked with Vietnamese refugees in Vietnam, Thailand, and Hong Kong in 1990 and 1991, and was awarded the 1991 Turner-Fairbourn Award for significant contributions to peace and justice. In April of 1993, Dr. Firmage gave lectures to the Justice and Peace Representatives of the International Congregation of Men and Women Religious in Rome. He went on to deliver the Kellog Lectures in May of 1993, entitled "The Human Being: War, Peace and Faith" at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Firmage was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Gold Medaille d'Excellence Laureates in Geneva, Switzerland in August of 2001, in recognition of a life of public service and citizen diplomacy on behalf of the betterment of humanity and the advancement of peace and justice.
During August of 1999Dr. Firmage attended the meetings of the Sub-commission Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. His speech at the sub-commission began debate on the topic "Toward the Creation of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence Toward Children, 2000-2010." Dr. Firmage also attended and delivered a speech, "Beginnings" in August of 2001 dealing with indigenous peoples, including Native American and Tibetan human rights. Members of Tibetan Parliament and His Holiness the Dalai Lama's cabinet began consulting with Dr. Firmage on matters of constitutional revisions and human rights in the 1980s, culminating in his meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the 1990s. Following the Geneva meetings, Dr. Firmage enjoyed a personal audience with His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalia Lama of Tibet, in Dharamsala, India, and later had extensive meetings with the Tibetan government-in-exile, including members of the cabinet, legislative leaders of the government, and the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission on matters of constitutional revision and international relations as well as human rights in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Meetings were held in Dharamsala and the U.S. In 2000 Dr. Firmage spent a month in Tibet addressing both medical and human rights issues. He spent the last two weeks of August, 2001 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his cabinet in Dharamsala working on human rights and the creation of three websites for His Holiness in Chinese, Tibetan, Hindi, and English. These meetings, begun many years ago, continue.
Dr. Firmage is a member of the American and Utah Bar Associations, as well as the American Society of International Law. He has served in a variety of other roles, including international affairs fellow for the Council of Foreign Relations, fellow in law and humanities at Harvard Law School and lane lecturer at Creighton University Law School. Dr. Firmage has been included in seven volumes of Who's Who in America, six volumes of Who's Who in American Law and five volumes of Who's Who in the West.
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Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America , Marquis Who's Who has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who's Who in America remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis now publishes many Who's Who titles, including Who's Who in America , Who's Who in the World , Who's Who in American Law , Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare , Who's Who in Science and Engineering , and Who's Who in Asia . Marquis publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who's Who website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.
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