Robert J. Cottrol joined the law school faculty in 1995 as a visiting professor of law of legal history. Previously, he taught at Rutgers University and Boston College, and had visited at the University of Virginia. As well as specializing in American legal history, Professor Cottrol has also taught torts and criminal law. His writings on law and history have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, American Journal of Legal History, Law and Society Review, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies and American Quarterly, among others.
He is the author of The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era (selected by Choice as an outstanding academic book for 1983), editor of Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (Book of the Month selection by the History Book Club), and From African to Yankee: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum New England (1998). Professor Cottrol’s book Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the Constitution (2003) won the Langum Project Prize for Historical Literature in 2003 and was a “Book-of-the-Month” selection of the History Book Club. Most recently, he has authored The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (2013).
He is currently doing research contrasting the role of law in the development of systems of slavery and racial hierarchy in the United States and Latin America. He has lectured on American law at the Federal Universities of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the University of Buenos Aires and La Universidad del Museo Social in Argentina.
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Panel: Election Law in Flux
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina333 W Harbor Dr
San Diego, CA 92101
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2021?
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and Practice Groups
The Mayflower Hotel, Grand Ballroom1127 Connecticut Avenue
Washington, DC 20036
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2019?
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and Practice Groups
The Mayflower Hotel, Palm Court1127 Connecticut Avenue
Washington, DC 20036
Panel: Election Law in Flux
24th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
Election law has attracted increasing academic and judicial scrutiny in recent years, with topics of...
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2021?
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and Practice Groups
On September 22, 2021, the Federalist Society's Faculty Division and Practice Groups hosted a panel at the Mayflower...
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2019?
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and Practice Groups
On October 2, 2019, the Federalist Society hosted a panel discussing the current composition and...
Supreme Court Preview: What Is in Store for October Term 2019?
Co-Sponsored by the Faculty Division and Practice Groups
On October 2, 2019, the Federalist Society hosted a panel discussing the current composition and...