Williamjames Hoffer , J.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Pre-Law Advisor
Department of History
(973) 275-2184
Email
Duffy Hall
Room 72
Williamjames Hoffer, J.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Pre-Law Advisor
Department of History
I teach a number of subjects including legal, economic and military history all with a view towards understanding how governments change and are affected by change with a focus on the United States. As both a lawyer and historian, I combine a number of different techniques not necessarily to find answers, but to start asking good questions. I bring this perspective to my research as well, which concentrates on political and legal history in the modern U.S. though future projects will look earlier. I believe that universities are the greatest contributors to human advancement and am very pleased to be a small part of that effort.
Education
- Ph. D., Johns Hopkins University, 2003
- J.D., Harvard University Law School, 1996
- B.A., Rutgers College, Rutgers University, 1993
Scholarship
- Co-author, The Clamor of Lawyers: The American Revolution and Crisis in the Legal Profession, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
- Co-author, The Federal Courts: An Essential History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Plessy v. Ferguson: Race and Inequality in Jim Crow America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
- The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism and the Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
- Supreme Court: An Essential History. The University Press of Kansas, 2007.
- To Enlarge the Machinery of Government: Congressional Debates and the Growth of the American State, 1858-1891. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
-
Abortion Rights Controversy in America: A Legal Reader
University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Accomplishments
- Samuel I. Golieb Fellow, New York University School of Law 2001-2002
- Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 1997-2001
- Arthur O. Lovejoy Honorary Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University, 1998-2001