Williamjames H. Hoffer, J.D., Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of History

Profile

I teach a number of subjects including legal, economic, and military history all with a view towards understanding how governments change and are affected by change with a focus on the United States. As both a lawyer and historian, I combine a number of different techniques not necessarily to find answers, but to start asking good questions. I bring this perspective to my research as well, which concentrates on political and legal history in the modern U.S. though future projects will look earlier. I believe that universities are the greatest contributors to human advancement and am very pleased to be a small part of that effort.

Education

• Ph. D., Johns Hopkins University, 2003
• J.D., Harvard University Law School, 1996
• B.A., Rutgers College, Rutgers University, 1993

Publications and Academic Distinctions

• "To Enlarge the Machinery of Government": Congressional Debates and the Growth of the American State, 1858-1891 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)

• Co-author with Peter Charles Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull, The Supreme Court: An Essential History (The University Press of Kansas, 2007)

  Co-editor with N.E.H. Hull and Peter Charles Hoffer, The Abortion Rights Controversy in America: A Legal Reader (University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

  Samuel I. Golieb Fellow, New York University School of Law 2001-2002
• Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 1997-2001
• Arthur O. Lovejoy Honorary Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University, 1998-2001