Professors William Nelson and John Reid
Spring 2014
Wednesday, 2:00-3:50 p.m.
Vanderbilt Hall, 201
LW.12050.001
2 credits
The Golieb Research Colloquium is successor to the Legal History Colloquium and continues its unique mission--the training of young scholars rather than the testing of ideas of senior professors. The core of the Golieb Research Colloquium consists of the Samuel I. Golieb Fellows, a group of two or three fledgling academics each year from schools around the United States. Golieb Fellows, who either have completed or are currently completing their graduate work in legal history, have come to NYU from doctoral programs at Cambridge, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, Virginia, Yale, and other universities. Other participants in the Colloquium have included J.D. students and graduate students at NYU, Fulbright Scholars from Europe, and faculty from NYU Law School and other law schools in the metropolitan region.
Participants in the Golieb Research Colloquium ideally will be at work on scholarship intended for publication, although other projects are possible. Some focus on writing articles, but most turn their attention to books. As a result, a number of important books have been written at least in part while their authors have been working at NYU. Among them are George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940; Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America; Laura Kalman, Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960; Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Litigation and Inequality: Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958; John Witt, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law, and Christian McMillen, Making Indian Law: The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory.
The Colloquium meets weekly throughout the spring semester to discuss the work in progress of the Golieb Fellows, of the legal history graduate students, and of the Law School's faculty engaged in historical research. Some guest speakers, mainly former Golieb Fellows and occasionally faculty from other universities, are also invited to present papers.
Because of the Colloquium's emphasis on scholarship, nearly all the young scholars who have attended the Legal History Colloquium during the three decades of its existence have become either professors of law or professors of history at universities throughout the United States. The schools at which Colloquium alumni are currently teaching include the University of California at Hastings, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, Chicago, Columbia, Connecticut, Dennison, Florida, Fordham, Georgetown, Harvard, Louisville, Minnesota, New York Law, Saint Louis, SUNY at Buffalo, Ohio State, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Washington and Lee, and Yale. One former member of the Colloquium is now Provost of Princeton University. One former Golieb Fellow served as law clerk to Chief Justice Rehnquist and is now Professor of National Security Law at the National War College in Washington, DC, another is Dean of Stanford Law School, while another is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Bowling Green State University. Yet another former Golieb Fellow is Chief Operating Officer of The Constitution Project at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C.
Although its emphasis has been on training young historians, the Legal History Colloquium also has proved invaluable to the NYU faculty. According to Professor William Nelson, a moderator of the Golieb Research Colloquium and co-founder of the Legal History Colloquium, no better forum exists anywhere in America at which to present historical ideas and work in progress. Nelson, in his words, "owes an unredeemable debt to the Golieb Fellows and other Colloquium participants who over the years have raised his work to a level far above that which he could have attained alone." In Spring 2014, Professors William E. Nelson and John P. Reid will moderate.
[Spring 2014 Schedule of Presenters TBA]
Spring 2013 Schedule of Presenters
January 23 - G. Edward White, David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
January 30 - Prof. Lloyd Bonfield, Director-Center of International Law, New York Law School
February 6 - Kevin Arlyck, Academic Fellow, Columbia Law School
February 13 - Professor Jed Shugerman, Harvard Law School
February 20 - Marko Radenovic, Princeton University
February 27 - Professor Jessica Lowe, University of Virginia Law School
March 6 - Sam Erman, Fellow, Smithsonian Institution
March 13 - Morton J. Horwitz, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School