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Charles Donahue

Paul A. Freund Professor of Law

Charles Donahue
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After graduating from Portsmouth Priory (now Abbey) School in Rhode Island, where I had the benefit of a thoroughly old-fashioned classical education, I attended Harvard College and concentrated in Classics and English. From Harvard, I went to the Yale Law School, which allowed me to spend virtually all of my third year in the Graduate School. I worked with two extraordinary legal historians, W. H. Dunham in English legal and constitutional history and Stephan Kuttner in the history of medieval canon law. A military obligation took me to Washington, where I worked for two years as an attorney-advisor in the office of the General Counsel of the Air Force and for a year as Assistant General Counsel of the President’s Commission on Postal Organization. The completion of the military obligation brought me to a crossroads, and after thinking seriously about staying in Washington in private practice, I joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, with the intention, since fulfilled, of becoming a legal historian. I visited at the Harvard Law School 1978–9 and joined the faculty full-time in January of 1980.

My interests range broadly over the field of private law, but history and property seem to go together, and I have taught first-year property now for more than fifty years. Other than that, my teaching and research have been in the area of European legal history. I regularly offer courses in Roman law, English legal history and Continental legal history. I have published an obscenely long book on marriage litigation in the ecclesiastical courts of England and what I had to call the “Franco-Belgian” region in the later Middle Ages, and am now working on the fourteenth-century volume of the new Oxford History of the Laws of England. In addition to law students, I am also interested in teaching legal history to undergraduate and graduate students. My basic legal history courses are cross-listed in the College, and I offer a seminar on medieval law in the History Department. I serve on the Committee on Medieval Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and on the University Committee on Religion. Outside of Harvard, I am a past president of the American Society for Legal History, a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the American Society for Legal History, the Society of Antiquaries (U.K.), and of the Royal Historical Society (UK); and a life member of the American Law Institute. My research interests take me Europe virtually every summer and sometimes during the academic year as well. In the past, I have held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics and the Vrije Universiteit te Brussel.

Education

  • LL.B. Yale Law School, 1965
  • A.B. Classics and English Harvard College, 1962

Academic Appointment and Employment History

  • Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School (1968 - 1971)
    Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
  • Associate Professor of Law (with tenure), University of Michigan Law School (1971 - 1973)
    Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
  • Academic Visitor, Law Department, London School of Economics and Political Science (1972 - 1973)
    London, United Kingdom
  • Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School (1973 - 1979)
    Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Vrije Universiteit te Brussel (1975 - 1975)
    Brussels, Belgium
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law (1976 - 1976)
    New York, New York, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, University of California School of Law (Boalt Hall) (1976 - 1976)
    Berkeley, California, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (1978 - 1979)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (1980 - Present)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Boston College Law School (1987 - 1987)
    Newton, Massachusetts, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School (1996 - 1996)
    Ithaca, New York, United States
  • Visiting Professor of Law, Boston College School of Law (2005 - 2005)
    Newton, Massachusetts, United States

Board Memberships

  • Vice-President and Literary Director, Ames Foundation (1989 - Present)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Councilor and Honorary Treasurer for the U.S.A., Selden Society (UK) (1991 - Present)
    London, United Kingdom

Honors and Awards

  • Fellow Royal Historical Society (UK) (Professional Honors)
    January 1986
  • Docteur honoris causa (Professional Honors)
    University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), January 2010
  • Fellow Medieval Academy of America (Professional Honors)
    April 2012
  • Honorary Member Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Chapter (Professional Honors)
    May 2012

Representative Publications

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