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John A. Ragosta

Lecturer
J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 1984
Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2008
M.A., George Washington University, 2004
B.S., Grove City College, 1981

John Ragosta is a historian, lawyer, and beekeeper who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a 2011-12 resident fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Previously, he was the Gilder Lehrman Junior Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He is working on a second book tentatively titled “Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Legacy, Our Heritage” (forthcoming University of Virginia Press). His first book, “Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped to Win the American Revolution & Secured Religious Liberty,” was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press.

Ragosta has taught history at the University of Virginia and Randolph College and law at the University of Virginia and George Washington University.

Before returning to academia, Ragosta was an international trade and litigation partner at Dewey Ballantine LLP, where he was deeply engaged in work for the U.S. lumber, steel, semiconductor, motion picture and cable and satellite launch industries. Ragosta was involved in many of the largest and most significant trade disputes of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He has served on the Advisory Committee for the Court of International Trade and has been designated to the list of panelists for dispute settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute and is a member of the American Bar Foundation.

Ragosta has degrees in early American history, law, and physics-chemistry.

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