William M. Wiecek
Professor Emeritus, History Department
Professor Emeritus, Law, College of Law
Chester Adgate Congdon Professor of Public Law and Legislation
Highest degree earned
Areas of Expertise
Research Interests
Selected Publications
Books
The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought: Law and Ideology in America, 1886-1937 (Oxford University Press, May 1998)
The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) (Kermit Hall, general editor; James W. Ely, Jr., Joel B. Grossman, and William M. Wiecek, editors) (includes fifty-three articles by Wiecek).
American Legal History: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press 1996), co-authors Kermit L. Hall and Paul Finkelman (first edition 1991).
Liberty Under Law: The Supreme Court in American Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
Nuclear America: Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1940-1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), co-author Gerard H. Clarfield; paperback reprint 1985.
Equal Justice Under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835-1875 (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), co-author Harold M. Hyman. This is a volume in the "New American Nation" series; paperback reprint 1984.
The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).
The Guarantee Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).
Booklets
Teacher's Manual to Accompany American Legal History: Cases and Materials (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) co-authors Kermit L. Hall and Paul Finkelman (95-page booklet).
Constitutional Development in a Modernizing Society: The United States, 1803-1917 (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1985) (80 page booklet).
Articles and Chapters
"Felix Frankfurter," "Supreme Court," "Legal Thought and Jurisprudence," in Peter J. Parish, ed., Reader's Guide to American History (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997).
"The Origins of the Law of Slavery in British North America," 17 Cardozo Law Review 1711-1792 (1996).
"Scott v. Sandford," in Donald C. Bacon et al., The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), IV, 1770-1772.
"Gladly Wolde He Teche: Students, Canon, and Supreme Court History," Journal of Supreme Court History. 1995 Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 11-18.
"The Constitutional Snipe Hunt," 23 Rutgers Law Journal 252-260 (1992).
"Murdock v. Memphis: Section 25 of the 1789 Judiciary Act and Judicial Federalism," in Maeva Marcus, ed., Origins of the Federal Judiciary: Essays on the Judiciary Act of 1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 223-247.
"State Protection of Personal Liberty: Remembering the Future," in Paul Finkelman and Stephen E. Gottlieb, eds., Toward a Usable Past: Liberty Under State Constitutions (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 371-387.
"United States Supreme Court," in Richard S. Kirkendall, ed., The Harry S. Truman Encyclopedia (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990), 347-350.
"The Liberal Critique of the U.S. Supreme Court," in Hermann Wellenreuther, ed., German and American Constitutional Thought: Contexts, Interaction, and Historical Realities (New York: Berg, 1990), 373-392. German version: "Die liberale Kritik am Obersten Gerichtshof der Vereinigten Staaten," in Wellenreuther und Claudia Schnurmann, Die Amerikanische Verfassung und Deutsch-Amerikanisches Verfassungsdenken (New York: Berg, 1991), 435-459.
"'Old Times There Are Not Forgotten:' The Distinctiveness of the Southern Constitutional Experience," in Kermit L. Hall and James W. Ely, Jr., eds., An Uncertain Tradition: Constitutionalism and the History of the South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 159-197.
"Slavery and the United States Constitution," Anglistik and Englischunterricht. Band 34: Zweihundert Jahre Amerikanische Verfassung (Heidelberg: Karl Winter Universitatsverlag, 1988), 83-98.
"'The Blessings of Liberty:' Slavery in the American Constitutional Order," in Robert A. Goldwin and Art Kaufman, eds., Slavery and Its Consequences: The Constitution, Equality, and Race (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1988), 23-44.
"Clio as Hostage: The United States Supreme Court and the Uses of History," California Western Law Review, 24 (1988), 227-268.
"The Witch at the Christening: Slavery and the Constitution's Origins," in Leonard W. Levy and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 167-184.
"Preface" to Historical Race Relations Symposium, 17 Rutgers L. J. 407-414 (1986).
forty-eight articles in Leonard M. Levy et al., eds., Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1986).
"Chief Justice Taney and His Court," in this Constitution (Spring 1985), 19-24.
"The 'Imperial Judiciary' in Historical Perspective," in Yearbook 1984 Supreme Court Historical Society (Washington, DC, 1985), 61-89.
"Judicial Systems," in Jack P. Greene, ed., Encyclopedia of American Political History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984), II, 680-708.
"Latimer: Lawyers, Abolitionists, and the Problem of Unjust Law," in Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman, eds., Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 219-237; paperback reprint, 1981.
"Dred Scott Case" and "Ex parte Merryman," in David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, eds., Encyclopedia of Southern History, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 370, 814.
"'A Peculiar Conservatism' and the Dorr Rebellion: Constitutional Clash in Jacksonian America," American Journal of Legal History, 22 (1978), 237-253.
"Slavery and Abolition before the United States Supreme Court, 1820-1860," Journal of American History, 65 (1978), 34-59.
"The Statutory Law of Slavery and Race in the Thirteen Mainland Colonies of British America," William and Mary Quarterly, 34 (1977), 258-280.
"Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the Legitimacy of Slavery in the Anglo-American World," University of Chicago Law Review, 42 (1974), 86-146.
"Popular Sovereignty in the Dorr War: Conservative Counterblast," Rhode Island History, 32 (1973), 35-51.
"Irving Lehman," Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Three: 1941-1945 (NY: Scribners, 1973), 451-452.
"The Place of Chief Judge Irving Lehman in American Constitutional Development," American Jewish Historical Quarterly, 60 (1971), 280-303.
"The Great Writ and Reconstruction: The Habeas Corpus Act of 1867," Journal of Southern History, 36 (1970), 530-548.
"The Reconstruction of Federal Judicial Power, 1863-1876," American Journal of Legal History, 13 (1969), 333-359. Reprinted in Bobbs-Merril reprint series; also reprinted in Lawrence M. Friedman and Harry N. Scheiber, eds., American Law and the Constitutional Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).
"Voice for Troubled Intellectuals," Saturday Review, January 3, 1970, 23-25.
"The Nation and the State: 1868," Wisconsin Law Review (1968), 312-320.
"The Origin of the United States Court of Claims," Administrative Law Review, 20 (1968), 387-406.
Previous Teaching Appointments
(Chester A. Congdon Chair in Public Law and Legislation)
Professor of History, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1977-84
(Associate Professor, 1971-77; Assistant Professor, 1968-71)
legal editor, Equity Publishing Corp., Orford, New Hampshire, 1964-65
Associate attorney, Snierson and Chandler, Laconia, New Hampshire, 1962-64