Michael Klarman

Michael Klarman is a prominent American legal scholar and historian known for his work on the United States Constitution, American Civil Rights Movement, and Brown v. Board of Education. He has written extensively on the Supreme Court of the United States, Fourteenth Amendment, and Reconstruction Era. Klarman's research has been influenced by Harvard University scholars such as Laurence Tribe and Frank Michelman, and he has taught at institutions like University of Virginia and Harvard Law School alongside Erwin Chemerinsky and Noah Feldman.

● Early Life and Education

Michael Klarman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in a family that valued education and social justice, similar to the families of Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and later graduated from Harvard University, where he studied history and government under the guidance of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Stanley Hoffmann. Klarman then went on to earn his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, where he was influenced by Duncan Kennedy and Mark Tushnet, and later earned his Doctor of Philosophy in history from University of Oxford, studying under Vernon Bogdanor and Noel Annan, Baron Annan.

● Career

Klarman began his academic career as a clerk for Judge Gerhard Gesell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and later worked as a lawyer at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., alongside Brendan Sullivan and Greg Craig. He then joined the faculty at University of Virginia School of Law, where he taught constitutional law and American legal history alongside A. E. Dick Howard and G. Edward White. Klarman has also taught at Harvard Law School, where he has been a colleague of Cass Sunstein, Martha Minow, and Randall Kennedy, and has been a visiting professor at University of Chicago Law School and New York University School of Law, where he has worked with Richard Epstein and Jeremy Waldron.

● Major Works

Klarman has written several influential books, including From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, which explores the Civil Rights Movement and the role of the Supreme Court of the United States in shaping racial equality in the United States, and Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History, which examines the Reconstruction Era and the Fourteenth Amendment. His work has been praised by scholars such as David Garrow, Derrick Bell, and Lani Guinier, and has been reviewed in publications like the New York Times Book Review and the Harvard Law Review, which has also published articles by Ronald Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon.

● Awards and Honors

Klarman has received numerous awards and honors for his scholarship, including the Bancroft Prize for his book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, which has also been recognized by the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. He has also been awarded the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for his contributions to the field of law and history, and has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, alongside scholars like Jill Lepore and Annette Gordon-Reed. Klarman's work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, which have also funded research by Eric Foner and Nell Irvin Painter.

● Academic Impact

Klarman's research has had a significant impact on the fields of American legal history and constitutional law, influencing scholars such as Reva Siegel and Robert Post. His work has been cited by judges such as Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and has been used in landmark cases like Grutter v. Bollinger and Fisher v. University of Texas. Klarman's scholarship has also been recognized by institutions like the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration, which have preserved his papers and research alongside those of other prominent scholars like John Hope Franklin and C. Vann Woodward.