Position: Adjunct Assistant Professor
Email: justin.simard@law.msu.edu
I am an Assistant Professor at Michigan State College of Law. My research traces the relationship between law, lawyers, and economic development in nineteenth century America. Commercial law played a critical role in supporting slavery. I also study that law and its legacy, revealing that American judges and lawyers continue to cite slave cases today and that such cases have not only been incorporated into modern judicial decisions but also into seemingly modern commercial statutes. You can learn more about this research and access a database related cases at http://www.citingslavery.org.
My J.D. and Ph.D. are from the University of Pennsylvania, and my B.A. is from Rice University. Before coming to MSU, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Willamette University College of Law, and had fellowships at Northwestern University and the University at Buffalo’s Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.