Legal History Faculty

Lauren Benton is a comparative and world historian whose research focuses on the legal history of European empires and the history of international law. She is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History at Yale, with a secondary appointment at the Law School.

Elizabeth Hinton is Associate Professor of History in the Department of History and the Department of African American Studies at Yale, with a secondary appointment as Professor of Law at the Law School.

John H. Langbein is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Legal History and Professorial Lecturer in Law. He is an eminent legal historian and a leading American authority on trust, probate, pension, and investment law. He teaches and writes in the fields of Anglo-American and European legal history, modern comparative law, trust and estate law, and pension and employee benefit law (ERISA).

Samuel Moyn is a Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale Law School. His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, in both historical and current perspective. In intellectual history, he has worked on a diverse range of subjects, especially 20th-century European moral and political theory.

Nicholas R. Parrillo is the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale, with a secondary appointment as Professor of History. He teaches administrative law, legislation, remedies, and American legal history, as well as seminars on public management and privatization.

Claire Priest is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor at Yale Law School, with a secondary appointment as Professor of History. She is the author of Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Professor Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution.

James Q. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. His subjects are comparative law, criminal law, and legal history.

John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His most recent book, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, was awarded the 2013 Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was selected for the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012.

Taisu Zhang is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His scholarship focuses on comparative legal history, specifically economic institutions in modern China and early modern Western Europe, comparative law, property law, and contemporary Chinese Law.