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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Best Faculties in Legal History

Brian Leiter

Last fall, I ran a series of "best faculties" polls in particular specialty areas (see the summary here).  The result weren't nuts, whatever the obvious limitations of Internet polls–though the Condorcet system mutes some of the problems.  Anyway, I thought we might try some more, starting with the area of "Legal History."  Below, I've listed scholars doing work in legal history at 18 law schools.  I've not listed schools with just one scholar in the area (even one prominent scholar, like Tomlins at UC Irvine).  I have tried to identify 18 schools that might end up ranked in "the top ten" in the area of legal history.  The criterion for inclusion of additional schools is NOT that a faculty might rank better than one of the schools listed below.  If I've omitted a school whose faculty might make the top ten, note it below in the comments.  If I've omitted non-emeritus faculty, who teach in the Law School, and who do significant work in legal history, please note that in the comments.  (I am particularly likely to have missed junior faculty.)  Faculty marked with an *, below, are either part-time or hold a primary appointment in another unit, but do regular teaching at the law schools in question.  If I've listed faculty who are emeritus or don't really work in legal history, post that in the comments below.  Do not e-mail me; post in the comments.  ONLY SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE APPROVED.

Columbia University:  Christina Duffy Burnett, Ariela Dubler, Philip A. Hamburger, Eben Moglen

Georgetown University:  Laura Donohue, Daniel R. Ernest, James C. Oldham, William Michael Treanor

Harvard University:   Christine A. Desan, Charles Donahue, Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed, Morton Horwitz, Michael Klarman, Adriaan Lanni, Kenneth W. Mack, Bruce Mann, Mark Tushnet

New York University:  Barry Friedman, Daniel Hulsebosch, William E. Nelson

Northwestern University:  Stephen Presser, Kristen Stilt

Stanford University:   Michele Landis Dauber, Lawrence Friedman, Amalia D. Kessler, Larry Kramer, Norman W. Spaulding

University of California, Berkeley:  David Lieberman, Laurent Mayali, Harry  Scheiber

University of California, Los Angeles:  Khaled Abou El Fadl, Stuart Banner, Jennifer Mnookin, Clyde Spillenger

University of Chicago:   R.H. Helmholtz, *Dennis Hutchinson, Alison LaCroix, *Gerald N. Rosenberg, Laura Weinrib

University of Illinois:  Daniel W. Hamilton, Richard J. Ross, Bruce P. Smith

University of Iowa:  Thomas P. (T.P.) Gallanis, Herbert Hovenkamp

University of Michigan:  Willian Ian Miller, William J. Novak, *Rebecca J. Scott

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:   Alfred Brophy, Eric Muller, John V. Orth

University of Pennsylvania:  Sarah Barringer Gordon, Sarena Mayeri

University of Southern California:  Mary L. Dudziak, Ariela J. Gross, Daniel M. Klerman

University of Texas, Austin:  William Forbath, Emily Kadens, Sanford V. Levinson, *Basil S. Markesinis, Lucas A. (L.A.) Powe, Jr., David M. Rabban

University of Virginia:  Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Barry Cushman, Risa L. Goluboff, *Charles McCurdy, G. Edward White

Yale University:  Akhil Amar, Robert W. Gordon, John Langbein, Claire Priest, Reva Siegel, James Q. Whitman, John Witt

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31 responses to “Best Faculties in Legal History”

  1. Joshua Landau

    It is Professor Daniel Ernst at Georgetown, not Ernest.

    Reply
  2. Eric Biber

    Jed Shugerman at Harvard is a junior prof who does quite a bit of work on legal history.

    Reply
  3. John Kang

    The political theorist Don Herzog at Michigan Law is not, strictly speaking, a historian but his fabulous books–Happy Slaves and Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders–are beautiful illustrations of how history can be conscripted into the cause of textual interpretation in political theory.

    Reply
  4. Lawrence Solum

    Kurt Lash joined the University of Illinois faculty this year.

    Reply
  5. Alexandra Lahav

    The University of Connecticut has several prominent historians: R. Kent Newmyer (author of excellent biographies of Justices Story & Marshall), Steven Wilf (recently authored a book called Law’s Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal Justice in Revolutionary America), Carol Weisbrod, as well as some up and coming folks: Bethany Berger and Sachin Pandya.
    BL COMMENT: Do you think U Conn might rank in the “top ten” in legal history? That’s the question, and I simply don’t know. Thanks.

    Reply
  6. Larry Garvin

    Steven Bank at UCLA writes quite a lot in tax history.
    BL COMMENT: Is writing in tax history the same as being a legal historian? Comments from readers?

    Reply
  7. Brian Bix

    At the University of Minnesota Law School, we have prominent legal historians Barbara Welke and Susanna Blumenthal, and also Carol Chomsky and Jill Hasday who also work in the area.
    BL COMMENT: The question is whether you think Minnesota might rank in the top ten in legal history? I simply don’t know.

    Reply
  8. Alexandra Lahav

    I think UConn could be in the top 10, yes. That is why I added it in the comments.
    I nearly forgot to add Peter Lindseth to our list of legal historians, he’s just written a book as well: Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State. That makes six legal historians, one (Newmeyer) with probably the best book on John Marshall ever written.

    Reply
  9. Mary Dudziak

    Minnesota would rank at least as high in legal history as some schools on your list. I would include it.
    At Penn there’s also Sophia Lee.

    Reply
  10. Josh Wright

    George Mason has (at least) Joyce Malcolm, Jeremy Rabkin, Ross Davies and David Bernstein. And yes, while this is not my area of expertise, I think GMU might well rank in the “top 10.”

    Reply
  11. Mary Dudziak

    I should have said it differently: Minn. is at least as likely to end up in the top 10 as some others on your list.

    Reply
  12. David Schorr

    What about non-US law schools? I think some might land up in a top-ten list.
    BL COMMENT: No doubt some would, but we’re limiting this strictly to US law schools, which the readership of the blog will hopefully be in the best position to evaluate.

    Reply
  13. Guyora Binder

    Buffalo has “full-time” legal historians Rob Steinfeld, Jim Wooten, Jack Schlegel, and Fred Konefsky. Others who sometimes do historical work include Rebecca French, Mark Bartholomew, Dianne Avery, and myself (Guyora Binder)

    Reply
  14. Stephanos Bibas

    At Penn it’s Serena, not Sarana, Mayeri. I’d also second Mary Dudziak’s note that Sophia Lee also does legal history here.

    Reply
  15. Ken Simons

    Boston University has a number of prominent legal historians, including Kris Collins, Anna di Robilant, Pnina Lahav, Gerry Leonard, and David Seipp. It also has others who have done serious work in legal history as part of their scholarship, including Andrew Kull, Gary Lawson, and David Lyons. Accordingly, I think BU could rank in the top 10 on your list.
    BL COMMENT: David Lyons is a wonderful philosopher, but he is not a legal historian! Let’s keep this real, please! You’re obviuosly right about Kull, maybe Lawson, though that again seems to me more of a stretch.

    Reply
  16. Thomas Gallanis

    At the University of Iowa, please add (at a minimum) Lea VanderVelde, Carolyn Jones, and *Linda Kerber.
    A full list of the faculty members affiliated with our Program in Law and History is available at http://www.law.uiowa.edu/centers/legalhistory.php

    Reply
  17. Susan

    Martha Jones has a joint appointment between Michigan Law and the Michigan History Department. Her first book was not strictly legal history, but her current projects deal with legal history and she teaches legal history.
    Also at Michigan: Madeline Kochen (ancient/rabbinic law/legal history); Bruce Frier (Roman legal history), Nicolas Howson (Chinese legal history).

    Reply
  18. Angela Onwuachi-Willig

    Lea Vandervelde at Iowa also does legal history. Her work on Mrs. Dred Scott, including her new book, is important and highly respected.
    Also, it depends on what you mean by regularly teach, but if every other year or so counts, Linda Kerber has co-taught courses at Iowa, and she cross lists her courses from time to time.

    Reply
  19. mary bilder

    Boston College has quite a few for a small school: Daniel Coquillette, James Rogers, Frank Herrmann, Intisar Rabb, Catherine Wells, and me (Mary Bilder), as well as people such as Ray Madoff and Mark Brodin, whose recent books have historical components.

    Reply
  20. Ken Bamberger

    At Berkeley Law, Kinch Hoekstra does intellectual history and the history of legal and political thought. More generally, Dan Farber has several books on constitutional history (Lincoln’s Constitution; Civil Liberties and National Security in American History; A History of the US Constitution).

    Reply
  21. Karen

    At Yale, Nicholas Parrillo also does historical work.

    Reply
  22. Gerry Leonard

    Regarding David Lyons at BU, it is important to be aware that for the last few years he has been doing quite a lot of work on the history of race and the law in the United States. The definition of legal history implicit in the various names posted up and down this page is pretty fluid, but, in the context of that list, it is easy to say that David Lyons has been doing a good bit of legal history for a good while now.

    Reply
  23. Joyce Saltalamachia

    At New York Law School, Ed Purcell, Bill La Piana, Jethro Lieberman, Lloyd Bonfield, Richard Chused and James Simon all have legal history as their primary scholarly interest, and together have produced numerous books on various topics.

    Reply
  24. Steve Bundy

    Robert Post at Yale has done a lot of wonderful historical work on the Taft Court.

    Reply
  25. Jamal Greene

    Particularly in light of The Shield of Achilles, I’d add Philip Bobbitt to the Columbia list.

    Reply
  26. Robert Ahdieh

    At Emory, David Bederman, Polly Price, Sasha Volokh, and John Witte all write on legal history – producing several relevant books among them, in recent years.

    Reply
  27. Bradford W. Short

    Brian Leiter probably left off Fordham because now, without Bill Treanor, it is harder for them to make this cut. But, back when he did the specialty rankings in 2003-2004, Fordham was competitive for top 12. I would say Fordham is still top 10, but then again, I am obviously biased. Still, I will say, Martin Flaherty, Rachel Vorspan and Bob Kaczorowski are every bit as much teaching all the time at Lincoln Center in Manhattan as they were before this past summer began. That trio should at least be mentioned here.
    Last, I have to note that back when the announcement was made that Treanor was moving to Georgetown, people said how that would be good for my personal career (he is one of my most important teachers, and I’ve never made a secret of that) and good for Fordham even, because it showed how valuable they were, that Georgetown would “steal” from them (someone on the Faculty Lounge, I think, made this point). All true enough. But I kept on thinking: “This will come to bite Fordham in the butt when people begin to re-evaluate which are the strongest faculties in legal history.” The mere fact that I am writing this post has confirmed my fears on that point.

    Reply
  28. Karen

    Another junior faculty member missing from the list is Cary Franklin at Texas.

    Reply
  29. Michael Froomkin

    I see I’m a bit late to the party, but as coordinator of faculty research, I feel honor bound to mention that U. Miami Law has David Abraham, Ken Casebeer, Steve Diamond, Marnie Mahoney, Kunal Parker and also others here doing various types of important work in legal history.
    BL COMMENT: Sorry, Michael, the poll is under way, but I should have put Miami on it–I’d forgotten about some of those folks.

    Reply
  30. Steven Wilf

    As my colleague at the Law School of the University of Connecticut, Alexandra Lahav, mentioned (but modestly didn’t include her own interest in the history of jury civil trials), we have a particularly robust commitment to legal history. Peter Lindseth (Ph.D. in French history from Columbia ) writes about the development of the European administrative state; Kent Newmyer, author of the leading books on Justices Joseph Story and John Marshall) is the dean of Supreme Court biographers; and Carol Weisbrod’s The Boundaries of Utopia about the contract law grounding for 19th century utopian communes is an acknowledged classic of American legal history. I am currently completing a legal history of United States intellectual property law. Other Faculty at Connecticut include Richard Kay (writing a legal history of the Glorious Revolution), Mark Janus (whose America and the Law of Nations 1776-1939 was published this year by Oxford), Phillip Blumberg (whose Repressive Jurisprudence in the Early American Republic was published this year by Cambridge), Richard Wilson, an anthropologist (whose Writing History in International Criminal Trials will be published this year by Cambridge), Anne Dailey (writing on the history of law and psychoanalysis), Sachin Pandya (writing on the history of insurance law and risk), and Bethany Berger (writing on the legal history of Native Americans and property). Bruce Mann (now at Harvard) and Philip Hamburger (now at Columbia) were previously Faculty members at Connecticut.
    ___________________
    Steven Wilf
    Microsoft Fellow in Law, Property,
    and the Economic Organization of Society
    The Program in Law & Public Affairs
    Princeton University
    Joel Barlow Professor of Law
    Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development
    Law School
    University of Connecticut

    Reply
  31. Paul

    If tax history (at least certain types of tax history) count(s) (and I think that it/they should), then Calvin Johnson (Righteous Anger at the Wicked States) should be added to the list.
    BL: Indeed, an embarrassing oversight on my part.

    Reply

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