Richard F. Hamm

My research interests are focused on the interaction of law and society in the American past, especially the 19th and 20th centuries. How ideas, individuals, and structures have combined to shape law and how law has determined the courses the government officials, reformers, and ordinary people have been the primary foci of my, and my students’, work.

I am currently polishing a book manuscript on the civil libertarian Arthur Garfield Hays’s work against racial discrimination from the 1920s into the 1940s.  I am also revising a long piece on the extradition hearing of Robert Elliot Burns challenging the legality of the chain gang.  I am also beginning new work on articles detailing the work law firms undertook in the wake of the development of the national restrictive immigration policies of the 1920s.  I welcome graduate students interested in exploring any aspects of interaction law and society in the American past. Undergraduate students interested in law and society or legal history, as well as those planning a career in law or governmental services are particularly welcome in my classes.