James T. Lindgren

Professor of Law Emeritus

Biography

James Lindgren is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University, with a BA from Yale and a JD and a PhD in (quantitative) sociology from the University of Chicago. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. He has published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, California, Northwestern, Georgetown, and UCLA Law Reviews, among others. His work includes "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal" (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and "Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered" (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). In Evans v. US (1992), the US Supreme Court adopted Lindgren's view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post.

Areas of Expertise

  • Law and Social Science
  • Criminal Law
  • Estates and Trusts
  • Professional Responsibility
  • Empirical Legal Research

Courses

Selected Publications

  • Retirement and Death in Office of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 47 Demography 269-298 (May 2010) (with Ross Stolzenberg).
  • Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered (2006) 1577 (with Steven G. Calabresi).
  • Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal, 111 Yale Law Journal 2195-2249 (2002).
  • Counting Guns in Early America, 43 William And Mary Law Review 1777-1842 (2002) (with Justin L. Heather).

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Education

  • BA cum laude, Yale University
  • JD, University of Chicago
  • PhD with honors, Sociology, University of Chicago

Prior Appointments

  • Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Benjamin Mazur Summer Research Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Norma and Edna Freehling Scholar and Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, 1990-1996, Chicago-Kent College of Law
  • Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, 1982-1990, University of Connecticut School of Law
  • Research Attorney, 1979-1982, American Bar Foundation
  • Attorney, 1978-1979, Reuben & Proctor
  • Attorney, 1977-1978, Hopkins & Sutter

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