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Glen Earl Weston, the S. Chesterfield Oppenheim Professor of Antitrust & Trade Regulation Law Emeritus, was born in 1922 in rural Oklahoma. He received his B.S. from the University of Maryland (1943) where he was a member of ROTC. After his Officer Candidate School training, he served two years in Europe under General George S. Patton. At the conclusion of his military service, he entered law school at GW, where he finished first in his class (1948). Professor Weston was the Recent Cases editor for The George Washington Law Review. It took him only two years to complete his law degree, and before graduation, he had a law firm job offer in hand and had passed the District of Columbia Bar examination.
After law school, Professor Weston practiced law with McFarland & Sellers in Washington, DC (1948-1950), and joined GW Law as an assistant professor in 1949. He was a graduate fellow at Yale (1951-1952) where he studied legislation before becoming an associate professor at GW in 1954, then full professor in 1958.
During law school, Professor Weston became a friend and, later, a professional colleague of his teacher S. Chesterfield Oppenheim (known as “Oppie”), a highly-regarded scholar specializing in antitrust, trade regulation, and intellectual property. Their friendship and professional association were to last until Professor Oppenheim’s death in 1988. Together they authored several books, including the four-volume The Lawyer’s Robinson-Patman Act Sourcebook (1971), Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection (1974), and Federal Antitrust Laws (4th ed, 1981). Professor Weston initiated an effort to establish an endowed chair to honor Professor Oppenheim, and created a committee which was successful in raising the necessary funds. In 1978, GW Law established the S. Chesterfield Oppenheim Chair in Antitrust & Trade Regulation Law, the first endowed chair at the law school, with a $500,000 endowment.
Professor Weston, one of the leading experts on the Robinson-Patman Act, taught courses in the fields of antitrust, trade regulation, and intellectual property. He was instrumental in expanding GW’s intellectual property course offerings, creating the first copyright course and introducing courses in patent licensing and international patent protection. He was active in law school life, and during the time he served as chair of the Faculty Library Committee, he pointed out that the Law Library’s seating and volume count fell short of ABA requirements, and spearheaded an initiative for additional library funding. He also served as chair of the Law School Improvement Committee, which inaugurated a student recruitment initiative.
Professor Weston was a visiting professor at Northwestern (1963-1964), a visiting lecturer at the Australian National University and Monash University (1976), and in 1982 he was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign & International Patent, Copyright & Competition Law. After his retirement in 1989, he was conferred emeritus status and remained professionally involved on a global level. He participated in drafting the charter for the World Intellectual Property Organization, and was a founder and U.S. representative to the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property, serving as its president from 1987-1989. Professor Weston is a member of the Order of the Coif.
Interviewer:
Jennie C. Meade, Director of Special Collections
Interview Date/Location:
Friday, July 8, 2011, at Professor Weston's home in Naples, Florida.