G. Edward White

G. Edward White joined the Virginia law faculty in 1972 after a clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States and a year as visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He was appointed John B. Minor Professor of Law and History in 1987, and held that chair until 2003, when he became David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. In 1992, he was appointed to a University Professorship, which he held until 2003. From 1990 until 1992 and from 2001-03, he was the Sullivan & Cromwell Research Professor; from 1994-97 the E. James Kelly Research Professor; and from 1999-2001 the Class of 1963 Research Professor. He has held visiting appointments at New York Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Arizona College of Law, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Auckland Law School and Harvard Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and twice a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the American Law Institute. He received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award in 2008.

White’s 20 published books have won numerous honors and awards. These include final listing for the Pulitzer Prize in history, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the James Willard Hurst Prize from the Law & Society Association, the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the Scribes Award and the Association of American Law Schools' Triennial Coif Award. White's books, and two of his scholarly articles, have garnered 18 such honors and awards since 1969.

White was editor of the Studies in Legal History series for the American Society for Legal History and the University of North Carolina Press from 1980-85, and adviser on law manuscripts for Oxford University Press from 1986-96. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History from 1977-79, and on the Board of Editors of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1980-2002. White has delivered several endowed lectures, including the inaugural John Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Boston Bar Association; the inaugural Jerome Hall Lecture at Hastings College of Law; the Swinford Lecture, sponsored by the University of Kentucky School of Law and the Kentucky Bar Association; the Keck Lecture at Amherst College; the Rosenthal Lectures at Northwestern University School of Law; the Neesima Lectures at Doshisha University, Japan; the Fulton Lecture at the Chicago School of Law; the Knowlton Distinguished Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law; the Hendricks Law and History Lecture at Washington & Lee Law School; the Legal Research Foundation Lecture at the University of Auckland Law School; and the Contextual Lecture at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. His most recent endowed lecture was the Acker Lecture at Birmingham Southern College in 2017.

White’s 1996 and 2022 books, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953 and Soccer in American Culture: The Beautiful Game’s Struggle For Status, reflect his life-long participation and interest in athletics. He lettered in four sports in college, formerly coached the Charlottesville High School girls soccer team, and has won a number of state- and citywide tournaments in doubles squash.