The J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History is sponsored by the Institute for Legal Studies in conjunction with the American Society for Legal History (ASLH). Each Institute is organized and chaired by a well-known legal historian and includes visiting senior scholars who lead specialized sessions. While sessions have been held biennially, it is possible the Institute will move to a three year cycle.
For each Hurst Institute, a committee appointed by the ASLH reviewed applications from beginning faculty members, doctoral students with completed or almost completed dissertations, and recent J.D. graduates, and selected 12 junior scholars from around the world as Institute Fellows. The Fellows came to Madison for two weeks to participate in seminars, meet other legal historians, and discuss their own work.
The 2001 Hurst Institute The inaugural session was chaired by Lawrence M. Friedman, the Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. The visiting senior scholars were Linda K. Kerber, the May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of History at the University of Iowa, and Robert W. Gordon, now Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School.
2001 Hurst Fellows List
2001 Fellows' Comments
2001 Hurst Institute Photo
The 2003 Hurst Institute The 2003 session was co-chaired by Lawrence M. Friedman, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. The program included presentations by guest scholars Barbara Welke, Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, and Morton Horwitz, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School.
2003 Hurst Fellows List
2003 Fellows' Comments
2003 Hurst Institute Photo
The 2005 Hurst Institute The 2005 session was again co-chaired by Lawrence M. Friedman, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. The program included presentations by guest scholars Laura Edwards, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Duke University, and Dirk Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University.
2005 Hurst Fellows List
2005 Fellows' Comments
2005 Hurst Institute Photo
The 2007 Hurst Institute The 2007 session was chaired by Barbara Welke, Associate Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota. Guest scholars included Lawrence M. Friedman, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford
Law School, Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and
Legal History at Yale Law School, Dirk Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University, Holly Brewer, Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University, and Margot Canaday, Cotsen-Perkins Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. A special session was hosted by Karl Shoemaker, Assistant Professor of History and Law at the University of Wisconsin.
2007 Hurst Fellows List
2007 Fellows' Comments
2007 Hurst Institute Photos
The Next Hurst Institute: June 14-27, 2009. We are pleased that Barbara Welke, Associate Professor of History and Professor of Law
at the University of Minnesota will chair the Hurst Summer Institute again in 2009. Guest scholars will be named at a later date. The two-week program is structured but informal, and features
discussions of core readings in legal history and analysis of the work
of the participants in the Institute. Applications will be accepted in Fall 2008 when more complete information will be posted.