In the fall of 2012, the Boston College Law School Legal History Roundtable started its eleventh successful year. The Roundtable draws on Boston College Law School’s and Boston College’s strength and interest in legal history. The Roundtable offers an opportunity for Boston College faculty and faculty from other area institutions, students, and members of the Boston College community to meet and discuss a pre-circulated paper in legal history. Meeting several times each semester, the Roundtable seeks to promote an informal, collegial atmosphere of informed discussion.

For the 2012-2013 academic year, Professor Mary Sarah Bilder, Professor Daniel R. Coquillette, Professor Frank Herrmann and Professor James S. Rogers are conveners.

The Roundtable generally meets on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons at 4:30 pm in the Rare Book Room of the Boston College Law School Library. Jointly sponsored lectures may be held in other locations. Refreshments are available at beginning at 4:15 pm.

For more information, please contact Judy Yi by calling the administrative assistants' office at (617) 552-4125 or emailing judy.yi@bc.edu. 

Fall 2012

For its inaugural event this year, the Boston College Legal History Roundtable program co-sponsored an event with the Boston College Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy:

Wednesday, September 12: Annette Gordon-Reed
“Law, Culture & Legacies of Slavery”
Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law and History at Harvard University
5:00 pm
Higgins Hall, Room 300
Boston College Chestnut Hill campus

Thursday, Oct 11: Emily Kadens
“The Continuing Problem of Custom from the Medieval Jurists to Public International Law”
Professor Kadens is the Baker and Botts Professor in Law at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in pre-modern European legal history. Her current research focuses on the problem of how custom functioned as law in medieval and early modern Europe.

Thursday, Nov 1: Sir John Baker
“The Legal History Nobody Knows”
Sir John Baker, of St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge is perhaps the foremost living historian of English law. He has published numerous articles and books, including the standard brief treatment of English legal history, Introduction to English Legal History.

Spring 2013

Thursday, Jan 10: Anne Fleming
“A Crisis of Contract: The Rise and Fall of Unconscionability as the ‘Law of the Poor’”  
Anne Fleming is a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law Harvard Law School. Her research interests include American legal history and contract law, with a focus on the relationship between law and poverty.  In 2011, the American Society for Legal History recognized her work with the Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars Award. 

Thursday, Apr 18: Michael Hoeflich
“From Scriveners to Secretaries: Legal Document Production in Nineteenth Century America”
Michael Hoeflich holds a B.A. and M.A. from Haverford College, a J.D. from Yale Law School and the M.A. and PhD from Cambridge University. He has taught at the University of Illinois, Syracuse University, and the University of Kansas and was dean of the law schools at Syracuse and Kansas. He is currently the John H. & John M. Kane Professor of Law at the University of Kansas. Among his publications are Roman and Civil Law & the Development of Anglo-American Jurisprudence (1998) and Legal Publishing in Antebellum America. 1780-1870 (2010).

Previous presenters include:

Pauline R. Maier, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History, MIT
Jack Rakove, William Robertson Co Professor of History and American Studies, Stanford Law School
Gerard N. Magliocca, Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law—Indianapolis
Hon. Margaret H. Marshall
Aniceto Masferrer, Professor of Legal History, University of Valencia and President, the Society for Comparative Legal History' (ESCLH)
Kristen Stilt, Northwestern University Law School
Abigail Chandler, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Hendrick Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor of the History of American Law and Liberty of Princeton University
Jedidiah Kroncke, Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Fellow, Harvard Law School
Intisar Rabb, Professor, Boston College Law School
Professor Kif Augustine-Adams, J. Reuben Clark Law School, BYU
Professor Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
Karen Beck, Curator of Rare Books, Boston College Law School
Professor Warren Billings, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, University of New Orleans History Department
Professor Barbara Black, Columbia Law School
Professor Susanna Blumenthal, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Emeritus Morris Cohen, Yale University Law School
Professor Kristin Collins, Boston University Law School
Professor Cornelia Dayton, University of Connecticut History Department
Professor Christine Desan, Harvard Law School
Professor Charles Donahue, Harvard Law School
Professor Mary Dudziak, Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science, University of Southern California
Professor William B. Gould IV, Stanford University Law School
Professor Ariela Gross, University of Southern California Law School
Professor Paul Halliday, University of Virginia History Department
Professor Richard Helmholz, University of Chicago Law School
Professor Francis R. Herrmann, S.J., Boston College Law School
Professor Marilynn Johnson, Boston College History Department
Professor Bernie D. Jones, Suffolk University Law School
Professor Carolyn Jones, University of Iowa Law School
Professor Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Professor Linda Kerber, University of Iowa History Department
Professor Ken Kersch, Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College
Professor Marjorie Kornhauser, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Professor Pnina Lahav, Boston University School of Law
Professor Kenneth Mack, Harvard Law School
Professor Joyce Malcolm, Bentley College History Department
Professor Ray Madoff, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School
Dr. Maeva Marcus, Editor of the Documentary History of the Supreme Court
Professor Jennifer Mnookin, University of Virginia Law School
Professor William Nancarrow, Curry College History Department (former Ph.D. candidate at Boston College)
Professor James Oldham, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Ileana Porras, Visiting Professor at Boston College Law School
Professor James Rogers, Boston College Law School
Professor David Seipp, Boston University Law School
Professor Jed Shugerman, Harvard Law School
Mr. Anthony Taussig, London
Dean William Treanor, Fordham University Law School
Professor Russell Versteeg, New England School of Law
Dr. Michael von der Linn, Antiquarian Book Department, Law Book Exchange
Professor Robert Williams, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law
Professor Michael Wilrich, Brandeis University History Department