Mission

The Mission of the Center

The mission of the W&L Center for Law and History (CLH) is to encourage and support the interdisciplinary study of law in its historical context. It aims to achieve that mission by bringing together scholars from W&L and throughout the world to promote research and teaching in all areas and periods of legal history. Newly created in 2003, CLH is focusing its early energies on three projects.

The first is to sponsor Legal History Lectures. These are major, public addresses by senior, distinguished historians. The inaugural lecture was given in September 2003 by the world's leading historian of the common law, Sir John Baker, Q.C., LL.D., F.B.A., the Downing Professor of the Laws of England at Cambridge University. In 2004-05, lectures were given by Charles Donahue, the Paul A. Freund Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and President-Elect of the American Society for Legal History, and by Barbara Hanawalt, the King George III Professor of British History at Ohio State University and President of the Medieval Academy of America. In 2005-06, the annual lecture was given by Richard H. Helmholz, the Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.  Each lecture is made available worldwide, using the Internet, with the webcast archived and available on the CLH website.  In addition to the lectures, a distinguished Overseas Scholar Colloquium was held in 2005-06 featuring Dr. Paul A. Brand, Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

The second project is to sponsor a series of Legal History Workshops. These workshops are designed to promote the discussion of scholarship in progress. Each workshop features an established or rising legal historian from W&L or from another university. The draft of his or her work is circulated in advance, and lively discussion and constructive criticism are encouraged. In our inaugural year, the workshops were led by:

• Robert C. Palmer, Cullen Professor of Law and History, University of Houston
• Bruce W. Frier, Henry King Ransom Professor of Law and Professor of Classics, University of Michigan
• Sarah Barringer Gordon, Professor of Law and History, University of Pennsylvania
• Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale University

In 2004-05, the workshops were led by:

• Stephen B. Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History, Northwestern University
• Daniel M. Klerman, Professor of Law and History, University of Southern California
• James W. Ely, Jr., Milton Underwood Professor of Law and Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

In 2005-06, the workshops were led by:

• Bruce P. Smith, Associate Professor of Law and Richard W. & Marie L. Corman Scholar, University of Illinois
• David Lieberman, Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law and History, University of California at Berkeley
• Rosemary A. Stevens, Stanley I. Sheerr Professor Emerita in Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
• Barry Cushman, Percy Brown Jr. Professor of Law and History and F. Palmer Weber Research Professor, University of Virginia

The third project is to promote and enhance the School of Law's collection of primary sources for legal history. Documents already on deposit include the papers of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (B.A. 1929, LL.B. 1931) and the School of Law archives. Descriptions of these materials will be featured in CLH publications, and the CLH website will encourage visitors to explore the related webpages prepared by the Powell Archives. Working with the Dean's office and the School of Law library, CLH plans to acquire additional materials, particularly in microform or in electronic format, so as to make the W&L law library collection one of the country's major repositories for legal-historical materials.

In the future, additional projects for CLH may include: sponsoring academic conferences, book talks, and summer institutes; developing programs to support scholars in residence, including post-doctoral fellowships; and establishing links and scholarly exchanges with legal history centers and faculties throughout the world.