The JD/Ph.D Program in Law
and American History is sponsored jointly by the University of Pennsylvania
School of Law and the Department of History.
The field of American legal
history has become more thoroughly interdisciplinary in recent years,
in part because of the contribution of scholars who have training
in law and history. The future of legal history lies with scholars
schooled in the two component disciplines. The J.D./Ph.D. program
in American legal history is designed to train students to teach American
legal history in law schools, history departments, specialized graduate
programs and undergraduate legal studies departments. The combination
of faculty in the Department of History who work in or are interested
in legal history with Law School faculty that also have appointments
in the Department of History make the University of Pennsylvania uniquely
qualified to offer this program.
The program design is interdisciplinary.
The seven-year course of study is comprised of four years of course
work followed by three years of dissertation research and writing.
The first year of the program is spent entirely in the Department
of History and the second is full-time immersion in the first year
curriculum of the Law School. The remaining two years of course work
are combined, with the student taking courses in the Law School and
the Department of History. At the end of this period the student should
be ready to take the Ph.D. qualifying examinations and receive the
J.D. from the Law School. The ability to work toward the degrees concurrently,
as opposed to sequentially, is an important part of this program,
allowing course work to be condensed within a reasonable number of
years and emphasizing the interdisciplinary aspects of legal history.
Students must apply competitively
for admission to both the Department of History and the Law School.
In the case of the Law School, where full-time study will not commence
until the second year of the program, this will require an early decision
on admission to a class one-year removed. Students interested in the
program will be asked to identify themselves to both the Law School
and the Department of History as joint-degree applicants so that their
admissions may be coordinated.
Inquiries about the program
should be directed to Sherita Ragins,
at sragins@law.upenn.edu,
and/or
Profesor Thomas Sugrue, the Edmund J. and Louis W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology, at tsugrue@sas.upenn.edu.
