Emily Kadens
Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law
Associate Dean of Research & Strategic Initiatives
Phone
(312) 503-1838
SSRN Author Page | Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Assistant
Jane Brock
Assistant Phone
(312) 503-8544
Assistant Email
janebrock@law.northwestern.edu
Biography
Professor Kadens is an award-winning legal historian with a particular focus on the medieval and early modern history of commercial law and practice. She has a JD from the University of Chicago and a PhD in medieval history from Princeton. An expert on English equity court archives, she is currently using previously unexamined equity court files to write a book on the history of commercial cheating in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. She has also written on custom, the concept of the law merchant, and the early history of English bankruptcy. She most recently led a team that spent three years building a machine learning model on the AI platform Transkribus that can transcribe 16th- and early 17th-century English secretary hand with an average accuracy of 97%. Information about the model, named “Egerton,” can be found at https://sites.northwestern.edu/egerton/. She is currently leading a new project studying how to leverage AI to analyze witness testimony from Early Modern English courts.
Areas of Expertise
- Contracts/Torts
- English and European Legal History
Selected Publications
- A Marine Insurance Fraud in the Star Chamber, in Star Chamber Matters: The Court and Its Records 155, edited by Natalie Mears & Krista Kesselring (2021).
- New Light on Twyne’s Case, 94 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 1 (2020).
- Cheating Pays, 119 Columbia Law Review 527 (2019).
- The Dark Side of Reputation, 40 Cardozo Law Review 1995 (2019).
- Convergence and the Colonization of Custom in Pre-Modern Europe, in Comparative Legal History 167, edited by Olivier Moreteau & Kjell Modeer (2019).
- Custom’s Past, in Custom’s Future: International Law In A Changing World 11, edited by Curtis A. Bradley (2016).
Education
- JD, University of Chicago
- PhD, Princeton University
- MA, Princeton University
- Diplôme, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
- MA, University of Chicago
- BA, University of Chicago
Prior Appointments
- Vice Dean, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Associate Dean of Innovation and Partnerships, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Visiting Professor of Law, Cornell University
- Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University
- Baker and Botts Professor in Law, University of Texas
- Assistant Professor of Law, University of Texas