John Andrew Spanogle, Jr., the William Wallace Kirkpatrick Research Professor Emeritus of Law, passed away on Friday, December 18, 2020, on his 86th birthday.
Professor Emeritus Spanogle served on the GW Law faculty for 24 years. A staunch advocate and leader in consumer protection law, he was a founding member of Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Group. He also rose to prominence in the fields of comparative commercial law and international trade law.
Professor Emeritus Spanogle was born in Newport News, Virginia. He received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a law degree from the University of Chicago. After graduating from law school, he became a law professor and taught at a number of law schools before joining GW Law in 1988.
During his teaching career, he co-authored the first casebook in consumer law and the most widely used casebook in international business law. In addition, he authored numerous articles on commercial and consumer law and was very active in drafting statutes in these areas for jurisdictions as diverse as Maine, Poland, Eritrea, and Trinidad and Tobago.
From 1982 to 1989, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. In 1991 and 1992, he received a Fulbright Grant to work as an advisor to the Polish Minister of Finance, which led to his serving as a consultant to numerous international organizations on proposed commercial financing legislation.
After his retirement from teaching, he helped fund the DC office of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), which was named the Spanogle Institute for Consumer Advocacy in his honor, and he served on the NCLC Partners Council. In 2020, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the 15th International Conference on Contract Law.
At GW Law, he established the Pamela Cook Spanogle International Commercial Arbitration Competition.