Professor Wells teaches and writes on topics such as torts, criminal law, jurisprudence and women and the law. She formerly taught at the University of Southern California and has served as director of the Division of Public Charities in Massachusetts. Her article, "Old Fashioned Postmodernism and the Legal Theories of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.," was published in the Brooklyn Law Review.

EDUCATION

B.A., Wellesley College; M.A., Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley; J.D. Harvard University.

RECENT ACTIVITIES

Presentations: “Who Owns the Local Church?” at the Conference on Bankruptcy in the Religious Nonprofit Context at Seton Hall University School of Law, Newark, New Jersey, in November 2004. "State Law Mechanism for Protecting Assets of Charitable Institutions," at a symposium entitled "The Impact of Clergy Sexual Misconduct Litigation on Religious Liberty," sponsored by the Boston College Law Review and Boston College’s Church in the Twenty-first Century initiative, at BC Law in April. "Poverty, Wealth, Status, and Inequality," closing comments at the Fifth Annual Trina Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Law Retreat, sponsored by the Society of American Law Teachers at Santa Clara University School of Law, Santa Cruz, California, in March. "Pragmatism and Outsider Jurisprudence," to the law students at the University of California, Berkeley, in February. "Pragmatism and the Problem of Outsider Jurisprudence," to the law faculty of the Social Justice Institute, at the University of California, Berkeley, in February.

Works in Progress: "Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Birth of American Legal Theory." "A More Just Appraisal of Langdell’s Contributions to American Legal Theory.”

Activities: Member of the panel entitled "History and Theory of Negligence," at the Wade Conference on the Third Restatement of Negligence, at Vanderbilt University, in October 2000.

Appointments: Elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

COURSES

Fall '08: Advanced Topics in Civil Rights--Microaggressions; Torts
Spring '09: Advanced Topics in Civil Rights--Microaggressions

• "The Noisy Wisdom of Monks." Boston College Law School Magazine 14, no.1 (Fall/Winter 2005): 45, 48.
• “Who Owns the Local Church? A Pressing Issue for Dioceses in Bankruptcy.” Seton Hall Legislative Journal 29, no. 2 (2005) (Bankruptcy in the Religious Non-Profit Context: Symposium): 375-398.
• "Churches, Charities, and Corrective Justice: Making Churches Pay for the Sins of Their Clergy." Boston College Law Review 44: no.4/5 (2003:July/September) (Symposium: The Impact of Clergy Sexual Misconduct Litigation on Religious Liberty): 1201-1227.
• "Reinventing Holmes: The Hidden, Inner, Life of a Cynical, Ambitious, Detached, and Fascistic Old Judge without Values." Review of Law Without Values: the Life, Work and Legacy of Justice Holmes, by Albert W. Alschuler. University of Tulsa Law Review 37 (Spring 2002): 801-817.
• "Reilly's Presence on Field of Sox Sale Dubious At Best." The Boston Herald Sunday January 27, 2002: A43.
• "A Pragmatic Approach to Improving Tort Law." Vanderbilt Law Review 54 (April 2001): 1447-1465.
• "Why Pragmatism Works For Me." Southern California Law Review 74 (November 2000): 347-359.
• "The Perils of Race and Gender in a World of Legal Abstraction." University of San Francisco Law Review 24 (Spring 2000): 523-535.
• "Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and William James: The Bad Man and the Moral Life." In "The Path of the Law" and its Influence: The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., edited by Steven J. Burton, 211-230. Cambridge [England]: University Press, 2000.
• "Speaking in Tongues: Some Comments on Multilingualism." University of Miami Law Review 53 (July 1999): 983-988.
• "Pragmatism, Honesty, and Integrity." In Integrity and Conscience, edited by Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams, 270-299. Nomos, 40. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
• Review of The Hidden Holmes: His Theory of Torts in History, by David Rosenberg, and Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912-1934, edited by Robert M. Mennel and Christine L. Compston. Law and History Review 17 (Fall 1999): 632-634.
• "Old Fashioned Postmodernism and the Legal Theories of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr." Brooklyn Law Review 63 (Spring 1997): 59-85.
• "The Theory and Practice of Being Trina: A Remembrance of Trina Grillo." Minnesota Law Review 81 (June 1997): 1381-1390.
• "Corrective Justice and Corporate Tort Liability." Southern California Law Review 69 (July 1996): 1769-1780.
• "Date Rape and the Law: Another Feminist View." In Date Rape: Feminism, Philosophy and the Law, edited by Leslie Francis, 41-51. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
• "Pragmatism, Feminism, and the Problem of Bad Coherence." Michigan Law Review 93 (1995): 1645-1666.
• "Introduction. American Association of Law Schools Symposium: Bringing Values and Perspectives Back into the Law School Classroom: Practical Ideas for Teachers." Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies 4 (Fall 1994): 1-6.
• "Holmes on Legal Method: The Predictive Theory of Law as an Instance of Scientific Method." Symposium: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the Judging Years. Southern Illinois University Law Journal 18 (Winter 1994): 329-345.
• "Clarence Thomas: The Invisible Man." Southern California Law Review 67 (November 1993): 117-148.
• "Improving One's Situation: Some Pragmatic Reflections on the Art of Judging." Washington and Lee Law Review 49 (Spring 1992): 323-338. [An adaptation appears in Boston College Law School Magazine 4 (Fall 1995): 34-37.]
• "Situated Decisionmaking." Southern California Law Review 63 (September 1990): 1728-1746. [Also appears in Pragmatism in Law and Society, edited by Michael Brint and William Weaver. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.]
• "Tort Law as Corrective Justice: A Pragmatic Justification for Jury Adjudication." Michigan Law Review 88 (August 1990): 2348-2413.
• * "Legal Innovation Within the Wider Intellectual Tradition: The Pragmatism of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr." Northwestern University Law Review 82 (Spring 1988): 541-595.
• * "Kingsfield and Kennedy: Reappraising the Male Models of Law School Teaching." Journal of Legal Education 38 (1988): 155-164. [Also appears in Legal Education, edited by Martin Lyon Levine, 373-382. New York: New York University Press, 1993.]
• * "Is Gender Justice a Completed Agenda?" Review of The Feminization of America: How Women's Values are Changing our Public and Private Lives by Elinor Lenz and Barbara Myerhoff. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1985. Harvard Law Review 100 (January 1987): 690-704.
• * "Peirce's Conception of Philosophy: Its Method and Its Program." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 23 (Spring 1987): 289-307.
• * With Richard A. Gross. "Making Bankruptcy Work for Consumers: Suggested Amendments to the Federal Bankruptcy Act." New England Law Review 12 (Summer 1976): 1-54.
• NOTE: Publications marked with a star (*) were published under the name of Catharine Wells Hantzis.