Professor Barry Cushman to Join the Faculty of Notre Dame Law School

The Notre Dame Law School, along with the entire University of Notre Dame community, is delighted that Professor Barry Cushman, the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, will be joining the Law School’s faculty this coming fall as the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law, Dean Nell Jessup Newton announced.

Dean Newton observed that the John P. Murphy Foundation Chair expresses the Law School’s admiration for Professor Cushman’s achievements and excellence as a teacher, colleague, leader, and scholar, and for his status as one of the leading legal historians of his generation.

Professor Cushman received his B.A. from Amherst College, and his J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia, where he has served on the faculty for fifteen years. His book, Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution (Oxford University Press), was awarded the American Historical Association’s Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law and Society in 1998. In 2003, he was honored with the University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award. Professor Cushman has taught regularly both in the Law School and in the History Department at Virginia, and for several years directed both the Law School’s Program on Legal and Constitutional History and the University’s Joint Degree Program in Legal History. Before entering law teaching, Professor Cushman practiced as an estate planning and probate attorney with the Los Angeles firm of Riordan & McKinzie. He is a former Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law, and is currently the Forbes Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

Professor John M. Finnis, the Biolchini Family Professor of Law at NDLS and Professor of Law in the University of Oxford, noted that Professor Cushman will strengthen and lead Notre Dame’s already strong group of scholars in public-law areas, and that his interdisciplinary experience and accomplishments will contribute to the activities of a number of the University’s departments, and enhance the Law School’s various collaborations with them.

At Notre Dame Law School, Professor Cushman will teach and write in a range of areas, including legal and constitutional history, constitutional law, and trusts & estates.