Gabriel Michael Wilner, a University law professor and executive director of International, Comparative and Graduate Legal Studies, died unexpectedly at his home Friday.

A native of Beirut, Lebanon, Wilner has been with UGA since 1973 and has served in several capacities since coming to the University. He has taught private international, comparative and maritime law, served as director of the law school’s Master of Laws program, and directed the Brussels Seminar on the Law and Institutions of the European Union since its inception in 1973.

Gabriel Michael Wilner

Wilner has also served as legal adviser and consultant to various United Nations institutions and to African and Asian regional institutions. He was an arbitrator in transnational disputes and drafter of the 1988 Georgia Arbitration Code and in 1991. He received the Whitney North Seymour Arbitration Medal from the American Arbitration Association.

He also served on the editorial board of the Columbia Journal of European Law and was a member of the advisory board of editors of the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce for 20 years. He has been the faculty adviser to the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law since 1973.

Wilner earned his B.A. from the College of William and Mary, his D.P.A. from the University of Exeter in England and his law degree and Mastor of Laws from Columbia University, where he served as editor in chief of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.  He was also a doctoral student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Wilner served as an associate in the legal department of the American Arbitration Association from 1964 to 1966 and then practiced law in Brussels, Belgium, for two years. From 1964 to 1969, he was director of studies at the Hague Academy of International Law. In 1969, he became a member of the Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations, where he remained until joining the UGA law faculty in 1973. He took a leave of absence from the university to serve as a legal officer in the technology transfer division of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1976-77, 1978 and 1979. Wilner then served as a legal consultant to UNCTAD from 1980 to 1985 and to the United Nations Commission on Transnational Corporations from 1985 to 1990.

He held a post as adjunct professor of law in the international graduate law program at the Faculty of Law of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel from 1976 to 2004. He has also served as a visiting professor at IMEDE in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Université Jean Moulin (Lyon 3) and Paris II (Panthéon-Assas). He taught at Emory University from 1984 to 1985. During 1991-92, he served as the Edward Ball Eminent Scholar and Professor of International Law at Florida State University College of Law.

Wilner received a Fulbright Research Fellowship to India for 1983-84 and lectured at J. Nehru, Delhi and Cochin Universities during that year. He has also lectured at the law faculties of Itam and Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, the University of Lagos, the University of Ouagadougou, the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Antwerp.

Wilner is survived by his wife of 40 years, Gisele Gabrielle Desmedt Wilner; and his nephews, Serge of London, England, and Axel, Yvan and Julien of Brussels, Belgium, and their wives and children.

A memorial service for Wilner will be held at the Bernstein Funeral Home in Athens on Friday at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, his family suggests a donation to the National Kidney Foundation , 30 East 33rd St., New York, NY 10016.

- Staff reports and UGA School of Law