Edward J. Larson to Deliver Doyle-Winter Lecture
Historian and legal scholar Edward J. Larson will deliver the Michael A. Doyle ’62 and Bunny Winter Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law Lecture.
Larson will give a lecture titled, “The Meaning of 1776,” on Nov. 10. The lecture draws from ideas in Larson’s latest book, “Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters,” which provides historical and political context for the year leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Sterling Law Building and is open to the Yale Law School community. Registration is required.
Larson is the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. At Yale Law School, he was the inaugural Doyle-Winter Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law in fall 2021 and holds the same professorship for the fall 2025 term.
Larson is the author of 14 books and numerous scholarly papers on law, the history of science, and religion. His 2015 book, “The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783–1789,” was a New York Times bestseller and resulted in an invitation to deliver the Supreme Court Historical Society lecture in 2016, give the annual Gaines Lecture at Mount Vernon, and serve as a featured presenter for the Library of Congress’ Madison Council event.
His other books, which have been translated into more than 20 languages, include “An Empire of Ice: Scott Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science,” “A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign,” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.” Larson’s articles have appeared in Nature, Atlantic Monthly, Science, Scientific American, Time, Wall Street Journal, American History, and The Guardian.
A popular speaker, Larson has lectured on all seven continents in a single calendar year and has been a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, the University of Melbourne, Leiden University, and the University of Georgia. He was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center, held the Fulbright Program’s John Adams Chair in American Studies, participated in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Writers and Artists Program, and served as an inaugural fellow at the Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
Prior to his work in academia, Larson practiced law in Seattle and served as counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. He earned a B.A. from Williams College, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from Harvard University.
The Michael Doyle ’62 and Bunny Winter Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law position at Yale Law School brings faculty from a wide range of perspectives for term-long visits with the aim of enlarging the community’s intellectual horizons.
