H-Law | Moderators

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:: MODERATOR BIOS ::

Chris Waldrep is the founder and lead editor of H-Law. Born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, he taught public school in Washington Court House, Ohio, before receiving his Ph.D. at Ohio State University in 1990. He taught at Eastern Illinois University from 1990 to 2000. He is now Pasker Chair of American History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890-1915 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2002), and other books. He has published articles in the American Historical Review, the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Social History, Civil War History, and other journals. His article on race and the law in Reconstruction Mississippi appeared in the March, 1996, issue of the Journal of American History. His latest book is Vicksburg's Long Shadow: The Civil War Legacy of Race and Remembrance. For more information, go to http://bss.sfsu.edu/waldrep/

Kenneth E. Aldous is an assistant editor of H-Law. Born in Glens Falls, New York, he is an associate attorney in the Manhattan offices of Proskauer Rose LLP. He holds an Advanced Diploma in Local History, with distinction, from Oxford University and an M.A. in European history from the University at Albany-SUNY. He also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in EC Law, with merit, from King’s College London and a J.D., cum laude, from Boston College Law School. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, in biblical literature from Oral Roberts University. He serves as the Secretary of the Legal History Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 2004, he moderated a panel presentation sponsored by that Committee entitled “The English Heritage of the Early American Bar,” featuring Sir John H. Baker, QC FBA and Professor Mary Sarah Bilder. An avid collector of medieval and early modern legal literature, his legal-history research has focused on the works and influence of the late fifteenth century jurist, Sir John Fortescue, as well as the question of judicial independence during the early modern period. His interest in history, however, is not limited to the development of the common law. Among other historical projects, he is working on a chapter, “The Civil War Years, 1855-1876,” for inclusion in the forthcoming History of Warren County, New York, as well as a book tentatively titled “If I am Lost and This is Found:” The Lives and Letters of Three Union Brothers, 1860-1865.

Jerome S. Arkenberg is an assistant editor of H-Law. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he received a B.A. in History and Political Science from Loyola University of Chicago in 1980, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. Admitted to the Illinois Bar, he practiced law out of his own firm in Chicago before returning to earn an M.A. in Ancient and Medieval History at Loyola University of Chicago in 1988. While ABD in Medieval History at UCLA, he has clerked at various firms in Los Angeles and Chicago, and taught at Cypress and Chaffey Colleges, as well as Chapman University, California State University Los Angeles, and California State University Fullerton. He has published several articles on Roman and Medieval history, along with a two-volume sourcebook of primary readings in World history, and a similar sourcebook for the Medieval Mediterranean world. Besides his work as Associate Editor for H-Law, he is also the Contributing Editor for the Internet History Sourcebooks Project. He is currently preparing a A Check-List of Medieval Common Law Manuscripts and A Manual of Medieval Common Law Incipits while finishing his dissertation on Medieval Common Law statute books and their owners.

Michael Pfeifer is a book review editor for H-Law. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991 and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1998. He is an Associate Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the author of Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947 (University of Illinois Press, 2004), as well as articles on the history of lynching and criminal justice in Louisiana History, The Annals of Iowa, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, American Nineteenth-Century History, The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition, and the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. His current research is on the origins and early history of lynching and criminal justice in the United States.

Please welcome our newest editors:

Carla Spivack. Before joining the faculty at Oklahoma City College of Law, Professor Spivack practiced civil litigation at Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, a New York law firm. She received her BA from Princeton, her JD from New York University School of Law, and her PhD in English Literature from Boston College. She clerked for the Hon Robert G. Flanders, Jr. of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Williamjames Hoffer. A graduate of Harvard Law School with a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, Professor Hoffer teaches at Seton Hall Univesity. He says, "Here, I have found a home. I not only teach legal, economic, and military history, write on the formation of American bureaucracy, contribute to the governance of the university, and spend time with some of the most fascinating, learned, and entertaining people I have ever met, a portion of them still have a pulse."

Charles L. Zelden is professor of history at Nova Southeastern University and author of Voting Rights on Trial and Justice Lies in the District: The U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1902–1960. His most recent book is Bush v Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy.