JAMES WILLARD HURST

• Born: October 6, 1910
• Died: June 18, 1997
• Nationality: American
• Profession:

James Willard Hurst is widely credited as the founder of the modern field of American legal history. Educated at the Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1935, Hurst was a research assistant to Professor Felix Frankfurter, and later a law clerk to Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Hurst spent most of his professional career as a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin. He was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge in 1967.