Lawyer and philanthropist Joseph “Joe” Lyon Brand, a former George Washington University trustee and instructor who in 2016 co-endowed GW Law School’s Brand-Manatt Lecture Series, died Dec. 17 at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 86.
Brand received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. from Ohio State University before enrolling at GW Law, from which he graduated with honors in 1963. He shortly thereafter joined the firm that would become Squire Patton Boggs LLP, where he would spent a five-decade career as a foreign affairs lawyer and international human rights activist.
Brand’s association with GW was long and multidimensional. He was a member of GW Law’s adjunct faculty from 1983 to 1995, teaching a core curriculum course in comparative law. He also served on the Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2004 and was a member of the GW Law Dean’s Advisory Council from 1992 to 1995 and again from 1997 to 2002. In 1993, he received GW Law’s Jacob Burns Award for Extraordinary Service.
In 2016 Brand co-endowed a lecture series with Charles T. Manatt, J.D. ’62, hosted by GW’s International and Comparative Law Program. Brand-Manatt lecturers have included United Nations Undersecretary-General for Legal Affairs Miguel de Serpa Soares, international human rights judge Elizabeth Odio Benito and White House alumni John B. Bellinger and Harold H. Koh.
Friend and colleague Ralph Steinhardt, Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law, remembered Brand’s generosity, his enjoyment of his work, his quiet tenacity and his intellectual force. They met when Steinhardt was a second-year law student interviewing for a summer associateship at Patton Boggs—a “squeaky baby lawyer” to Brand’s “real grown-up”—and would remain friends until Brand’s death.
“Mentorship was one of the professional roles he most cherished, and he was the model mentor,” said Steinhardt, who also served with Brand on the board of the nonprofit Center for Justice and Accountability, which works to prevent human rights abusers from seeking impunity in the United States. “He served GW Law School for decades—teaching its students, investing in its future and helping to choose and then to guide its leaders.”
