After two years service in the Navy, he and his Turtle Creek High School classmate Bill Norris matriculated at Princeton. He was an SPIA major and belonged to the Campus and Press clubs.
In 1952 Layman earned an MPA from Harvard and in 1956 a law degree from Yale. He taught at Yale Law School before becoming an associate professor of law in 1966 at the University of Michigan and a senior research scientist at the Mental Health Research Institute. He was promoted to professor of law in 1971 and retired from the law school in 2006.
Layman was best-known for his work in mathematical logic, instructional gaming, computers and the law, clear legal writing, and artificial intelligence. He focused especially on legal applications of formal analytical methods. He was the author of the book WFF ’N PROOF: The Game of Modern Logic. (WFF is an abbreviation for well-formed formula.)
Layman died Sept. 16, 2018. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Leslie Ann Olsen, professor of technical communications at the Michigan College of Engineering, and four children, including Layman G. ’75.