The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (Yale Law Library Series in Legal History and Reference)

More than 700 concise biographies of leading figures in the history of American law, from the colonial era to the present day

This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law.

Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others—the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself.

Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains.

Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law:

John Ashcroft

Robert H. Bork

Bill Clinton

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Patrick Henry

J. Edgar Hoover

James Madison

Thurgood Marshall

Sandra Day O’Connor

Janet Reno

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

John T. Scopes

O. J. Simpson

Alexis de Tocqueville

Scott Turow

And more than 700 others

Roger K. Newman teaches at the Columbia University School of Journalism and has devoted nearly 40 years to studying and writing about the Supreme Court and American law. He is author of Hugo Black: A Biography, which won the Scribes book award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize, and editor-in-chief of The Constitution and Its Amendments (4 volumes). He lives in the Bronx, New York.