Internationally Renowned Law Expert Witt to Speak
7 April 2017 Internationally Renowned Law Expert Witt to Speak
Distinguished legal scholarand historian John Fabian Witt will visit Hobart and William Smith on Thursday and Friday, April 13 and 14, when he will engage with philosophy students, deliver a public lecture and lead a faculty seminar.
An expert in the history of American law, the laws of war and the law of torts, Witt is the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale University, with a dual appointment in Yales history department. He is the author of, among other books, Lincolns Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the 2013 Bancroft Prize in history of the Americas and was a finalist for Pulitzer Prize.
Based partlyon that highly acclaimed book,Witts talk, The Puzzling Laws of War: From Lincoln to Afghanistan, will begin at 4:35 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, in Coxe Hall, Room 8. The lecture will examine how the modern laws of armed conflict apply in war zones around the world, tracing their history from the American Civil War through the post-9/11 conflict in Afghanistan.
Earlier that afternoon, Witt will join Professor Steven Lees Philosophy of Law class as a guest instructor.
On Friday morning, he will hold a seminar for faculty in the Blackwell Room in Demarest Hall. In his talk, The Radical Roots of Brown v. Board: A Blueprint for Modern Constitutional Change, Witt will consider the cases radical beginnings why subsequent constitutional transformations have sought to replicate the blueprint of Browns reasoning.
In addition to Lincolns Code, Witts writings includePatriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law and the prizewinningThe Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law.He recently published a book on the law of torts,Torts:Cases, Principles, and Institutions, and is currently editing a book on constitutional orders in emergencies, as well as writing a history of the Garland Fund: the 1920s philanthropic foundation whose work financed the efforts that culminated inBrown v. Board of Education.Witt is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Society of American Historians, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for his project on the laws of war in American history.
His visit to campus is sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa and the Colleges Philosophy Department.