Program on Legal & Constitutional History
Virginia is the nation's leading center for the study of American
legal and constitutional history. Six members of the law faculty
hold doctoral degrees in history, and several others also regularly
produce influential scholarship in the field. This enables the
Law School to offer an unparalleled variety of lecture courses,
seminars, and colloquia in English and American legal and constitutional
history.
In cooperation with the University's Corcoran Department of
History, the Law School's Program in Legal and Constitutional
History includes a combined-degree opportunity that allows students
to obtain a J.D. and an M.A. in history in three years. Several
veterans of the combined-degree program have gone on to successful
careers in legal academia, and three of its recent graduates
have clerked for justices of the Supreme Court of the United
States.
In addition, the Program on Legal and Constitutional History
sponsors two types of events. The first is a monthly legal history
luncheon workshop, to which members of the faculty from Virginia
and elsewhere are invited to present works in progress. Advanced
J.D./M.A. candidates not only attend those workshops, but are
also offered the opportunity to present a draft of their M.A.
theses to the workshop, an opportunity they have found exhilarating
and constructive.
The second type of event is an afternoon session in which authors of recent important books are invited to engage in discussions of their work with students and faculty participating in the Colloquium in American Legal History. In recent years these authors have included Eric Foner, Philip Hamburger, and John Witt of Columbia University; Hendrik Hartog of Princeton University; Sarah Barringer Gordon of the University of Pennsylvania; Bruce Mann of Harvard University; Karl Jacoby of Brown University; Mary Dudziak of the University of Southern California; David Tanenhaus of UNLV; Barbara Welke of the University of Minnesota; and Lindsay Robertson of the University of Oklahoma.
Student organizations such as the American
Constitution Society and the Federalist
Society often host speakers on legal history or constitutional
law, in the past including George Mason University professor
Nelson Lund on the revival of the Second Amendment, Princeton
University professor Keith Whittington on how theories of the
original intent of the Constitution's framers are applied in
contemporary politics, and Judge Morris Arnold of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a specialist on legal
regimes on the American frontier, on writing intercultural
legal history.
CONCENTRATIONS
CLINICAL OFFERINGS
UPCOMING AND RECENT EVENTS IN: