UCLA School of Law is mourning the loss of Professor Emeritus Phillip R. Trimble, who died on September 22, 2024, at age 87. A former U.S. ambassador and leading authority and scholar in international law, Trimble taught and guided generations of UCLA Law students and others in the broader legal and diplomatic community.

He was a professor at the law school from 1981 to 2001, a tenure that included service as UCLA’s Vice Provost for International Studies and Overseas Programs. In a message to the law school community, Dean Michael Waterstone called Trimble, “a storied diplomat and public servant; a prominent scholar; and a thoughtful, unusual person of many interests.”

Professor Kal Raustiala – who serves as the Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law, director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, and faculty director of the International and Comparative Law Program at UCLA Law – offered further reflections on his longtime colleague and mentor:

Phil began his career conventionally, at Cravath, Swaine and Moore. But he went to serve in government in a number of key roles: as a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Sen. Fulbright (1971-72); as Assistant Legal Adviser for Economic and Business Affairs in the Department of State in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations (1973-78); as counsel to the mayor and then deputy mayor of New York City under Ed Koch (1979-80); and, his point of great pride, as the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal at the end of the Carter administration. Phil was chosen for Nepal because he was not your ordinary lawyer or government official. An avid mountaineer, he climbed on five continents, including expeditions to New Guinea, India, Pakistan, Bhutan and both the North and South Poles. While serving in the State Department, he even climbed Mt. Everest.

Phil was most widely known in the law school world as the co-author of what was then the leading international law casebook, Carter and Trimble. (Now Weiner, Hollis and Keitner.) When I first arrived at UCLA as a young assistant professor, I assumed, teaching Public International Law, I would be expected to use this book. Phil quickly disabused me of that notion. “Don’t use my book,” he told me. He was tired of it; but more to the point, he didn’t want me to feel I had to bow down to him. (I found a different book, but more importantly, found a mentor who always gave me sage advice.)

Phil was already moving on to his post UCLA career. Long interested in music, theater and the larger world outside academia, he made recordings on his many trips around the globe and even helped direct musical theater abroad. He spent decades studying and practicing Buddhism. Along with his wife, Valeria Vasilevski, in the years after he left UCLA, he lived in New York City (behind a donut shop, I recall) and soaked up all that metropolis had to offer. After their ancient tenement building effectively collapsed, they moved to Philadelphia.

Phil lives on his writing. In addition to his many law review articles and books, his work was published in the American Alpine Journal, The Himalayan Journal and Birding magazine.