Home Page for Peter W. Low

E-Mail:
pwl@virginia.edu

Phone:
(434) 924-7953

Office: WB171B

Secretary/Assistant:
Dianne Johnson

Peter W. Low

Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law
LL.B., University of Virginia School of Law, 1963
A.B., Princeton University, 1959

After earning his law degree, Peter Low served for a year as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. He joined the Virginia law faculty the next year (1964). For about half of the period from 1965 until 1985, Low served as assistant and then associate dean. In 1989 he was named academic associate dean, a position he held until January 1, 1994. He became the vice president and provost of the University in July of 1994 and served in that position until September 1, 2001. He then returned to the law faculty, but continues to serve as the University’s representative to an international consortium of universities (see www.universitas21.com). From April 2002 until February 2004, he co-directed a related entity concerned with quality control of Internet-based educational programs in the Asia-Pacific market (see www.universitas21.com/u21pedagogica.htm). He remains a member of the Board of that organization, and has also served as its CEO.

Low became the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law in 1975. He was the first recipient of the John V. Ray Research Professorship in Law in 1987, a two-year appointment. His major teaching areas are criminal law and federal criminal law. He is also active in the federal courts and civil rights areas. In the past he has taught civil procedure, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. He taught in the initial session of the Law School’ summer LL.M. program for judges. He lectured frequently to local police and F.B.I. agents at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Virginia, from 1972 to 1982, and served as the academic coordinator for law-related instruction at the Academy from 1970 until 1999. He was a member of the faculty at the law session of the Salzburg Seminars in American Studies in 1972, and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University in England for six months in 1970. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford law schools.

While attending law school, Low was a member of the Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the Order of the Coif and the Raven Society, and is a Life Member of the American Law Institute. As a consultant to the Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Low was principal draftsman for portions of the Commission’s Study Draft of a new Federal Criminal Code. He also served as a Reporter for the American Law Institute, Model Penal Code & Commentaries, for Part I (General Part) from 1970 to 1975 and for Part II (Substantive Crimes) from 1976-78. He was a Reporter for the American Bar Association Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Advisory Committee on Sentencing and Review, from 1965 to 1968.

Low grew up in Front Royal and Fredericksburg, Virginia. He attended the Woodberry Forest School from 1950 to 1955. He has been married to Carol Randolph Low since 1960. The older of their two daughters runs a graphic design business in Atlanta with her husband. The younger is married to an ex-serviceman now in business, has two sons, is a reading specialist for primary-level school children who experience learning difficulties, and is currently coordinator of a Head Start program. Low is a member of the Farmington and Keswick Country Clubs, and is a former President of Farmington.

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