Victoria Nourse

E-mail: vfnourse@wisc.edu
Telephone: 262-5503
Office: Room 9107, Law School

Education:
B.A., Stanford University
J.D., University of California-Berkeley

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Biography

Victoria Nourse teaches criminal law, legislation, and constitutional law & history. She has been a visiting Professor at Yale Law School, where she taught constitutional law in 2003 and at NYU Law School where she taught criminal law in 2004.   Her first book, In Reckless Hands, a history of the controversial constitutional case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, was released in July 2008 by WW Norton. 

During 2008, Professor Nourse will be talking about her book at various public venues and will be presenting papers at Oxford University, All-Souls College, Queen's College in Canada, and the University of California at Berkeley.  

Professor Nourse has published in a variety of journals, including the Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, and NYU law reviews on criminal law defenses, political theory and the criminal law, the separation of powers, statutory interpretation, and constitutional history. Her two most recent articles on the constitutional history of equality and rights during the Lochner era will appear in the Duke Law Journal and the California Law Review (Boalt Hall) in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Professor Nourse came to teaching after a prestigious career in New York and Washington. She clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld on the Southern District of New York. In 1986, she joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. At the invitation of Arthur Liman, then chief counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair, Professor Nourse left New York to serve as Assistant Counsel to that committee. In 1988, she moved to the United States Department of Justice, where she argued appellate cases on behalf of the government. In 1990, she returned to the Senate as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. From 1991-1994, Professor Nourse was the chief attorney advising the Committee's chairman on criminal law matters. While serving in that capacity, Professor Nourse assisted the committee in drafting the Violence Against Women Act and in managing two omnibus crime bills.

Professor Nourse received her B.A. in History from Stanford University, where she was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1984, she received her J.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as Senior Articles Editor of the California Law Review.    She lives in Milwaukee with her husband, Richard D. Cudahy, Jr. and her two children, Mia and Jack.