Professor James Q. Whitman FBA
- Fellow type
- International Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
- Subjects
- Law
- Sections
- Law
Summary
After taking his B.A. in Comparative Literature at Yale, James Q. Whitman studied the history of classical scholarship with Arnaldo Momigliano at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1987. This was followed by a J.D. from Yale in 1988. After a stint as a judicial clerk, he began his teaching career at Stanford Law School before returning to Yale, where he is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law.
He works on topics in both legal history and comparative law. His 2003 book 'Harsh Justice' set out to explain why criminal punishment is so much more punitive in the United States than in Europe.
Other work in comparative law includes studies in the comparative law of privacy and comparative criminal law.
The guiding question in his comparative work is why the value of human dignity plays so much more powerful a role in the law of Continental Europe than it does in the United States.
Among his historical works is 'The Origins of Reasonable Doubt' (2008), a study of the theological roots of criminal procedure, and 'Hitler’s American Model' (2017) which traces the influence of American race law on the Nazi Nuremberg Laws.
His most recent book is a study of the long history of the conceptualization of ownership in the Roman legal tradition, 'From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands' (2024). He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences among other honors.