Eder, Phanor James, 1880-1971

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Eder, Phanor James, 1880-1971

Phanor James Eder was born in Palmira, Colombia on December 11, 1880. He was the son of Santiago M. Eder, a lawyer and industrial pioneer in the Cauca Valley and Lizzie Benjamin, of London.

Phanor Eder completed his studies in public and private schools in London, New York and Belgium. He received his bachelor's degree from City College of New York in 1900 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1903. That same year he was named special student assigned to the faculty at the University of Liege in Belgium, from 1903 to 1904.

He specialized in legal work associated with Latin America, concentrating on mining laws of Colombia. He devoted most of his work to his principal client, the South America Gold and Platinum Company, later the International Mining Company.

Mr. Eder was a former Colombian ad honorem vice-consul in New York in 1904. During World War I, he served as legal advisor to the Mercantile Bank of the Americas. From 1917 to 1922 he also served as secretary and vice-president of the Mercantile Bank of the Americas.

Later, he joined the New York law firm of Hordin and Hess, which afterwards became Hordin, Hess, Eder and Rashap, for which Eder continued as counselor after his retirement from active practice in 1969.

In 1947 Dr. Eder opened the legal program of the Inter-American Law Institute at New York University, of which he was adjunct professor of law.

In 1952, he was honored by the Institute for realizing three of his comparative law projects: the transformation of the American Foreign Law Association into a national body recognized by UNESCO as the official United States organization in comparative law; the establishment of the Inter-American Law Institute as a

permanent feature of the New York University Law Center and the founding of the American Journal of Comparative Law.

He was the author of Colombia, published in 1913; Comparative Survey of Anglo-American and Latin American Law, 1950; a book about his father published in Spanish in Colombia, Santiago M. Eder, El Fundador, and other works. Phanor J. Eder died at the age of 90 on March 5, 1971 in New York City while writing his memoirs.