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Sarah Barringer Gordon

Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History

Sarah Gordon

Sally Gordon is well known for her work on religion in American public life and the law of church and state, especially for the ways that religious liberty developed over the course of American national history. She is a frequent commentator in news media on the constitutional law of religion and debates about religious freedom. Continue reading…

Books

CONVICTIONS: MORMON POLYGAMY AND CRIMINAL LAW ENFORCEMENT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY UTAH (with Kathryn Daynes, co-author, Univ. Illinois Press) (forthcoming)

THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW: RELIGIOUS VOICES AND THE CONSTITUTION IN MODERN AMERICA (Harvard Univ. Press, 2010).
[Available Here]

THE MORMON QUESTION: POLYGAMY AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (Univ. of North Carolina Press 2002).
[Available Here]

Articles and Book Chapters

The First Wall of Separation between Church and State: Race, Religion, and Disestablishment in Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia, 85 J. SOUTHERN HIST. 61 (2019).

Fatal Convergence in the Kingdom of God: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American History, 37 J. EARLY REPUBLIC 263 (2017) (with Jan Shipps).

The African Supplement: Religion, Race, and Corporate Law in Early National America, 72 WM. & MARY Q. 353 (2015).

The First Disestablishment: Limits on Church Power and Property Before the Civil War, 162 U. PA. L. REV. 307 (2014).

The Landscape of Belief: Disestablishment and Property in the Early Republic, in MAKING LEGAL HISTORY: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF WILLIAM E. NELSON (Daniel J. Hulsebosch & Richard B. Bernstein eds., NYU Press, 2013).

The Myth of American Religious Freedom, 98 J. AM. HIST. 1139 (2012) (book review).

What We Owe Jehovah's Witnesses, AM. HIST., Apr. 2011, at 36.

Malnak v. Yogi: The New Age and the New Law, in LAW AND RELIGION: CASES IN CONTEXT (Leslie Griffin ed., Aspen Press 2010).

Religion, and The Private Law of Property, in OXFORD INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LEGAL HISTORY (Stanley N. Katz ed., Oxford 2009).

Religion and Law, 1790-1920, in CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW (Michael Grossberg & Christopher L. Tomlins, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2008).

“Free” Religion and “Captive” Schools: Catholics, Protestants, and School Funding at Mid-Century, 56 DEPAUL L. REV. 1177 (2007).

Friendship and Scholarship: A Report from the Archives (Utah State Univ. Press 2007).

Religion and Law, 1790-1920, in CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW (Michael Grossberg & Christopher L. Tomlins, eds., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008).

Review Essay: Where the Action Is--Law, Religion, and the Scholarly Divide, 18 RELIGION & AM. CULTURE 249 (2008).

Law and Everyday Death: Infanticide and the Hester Vaughn Case, in LIVES IN THE LAW (Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas & Martha Merrill Umphrey eds., Univ. of Michigan Press 2006).

Law and the Contact of Cultures, in BLACKWELL COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN WEST, William Deverell, ed. (Blackwell Publishers 2004).

Mormon Polygamy and American History (Conference on Law, Culture and the Humanities, Apr. 2002; Historical Society of Pennsylvania, June 2002).

The Mormon Question and Race in Nineteenth Century America (presented at Mormon History Association, Tucson, May 2002).

Blasphemy and Religious Liberty in Antebellum America, AM. Q. 52 (Dec. 2000).

The Lives of Women at the Mercy of Law: Hester Vaughn and the Woman's Rights Campaign after the Civil War (Amherst College, Nov. 1999).

"Our National Hearthstone": Anti-Polygamy Fiction and the Sentimental Campaign Against Moral Diversity in Antebellum America, 8 YALE J.L. & HUMAN. 295 (1996).

The Second American Disestablishment: Blasphemy, Polygamy, and Church-State Relations in the Nineteenth Century (presented at Cornell Program in Ethics & Public Life, Young Scholars Weekend, Apr. 1997; Fordham Law School, Feb. 1998; NYU School of Law, Apr. 1998).

More publications can be found here.

Working Papers

FREEDOM'S HOLY LIGHT: DISESTABLISHMENT IN AMERICA, 1776-1876 (book-length project on separation of church and state, including focus on development of new religious organizations, slavery, taxation, schism, political entities, enterprise, bankruptcy, and more) (forthcoming)

Research Areas

  • American History
  • Constitutional Law
  • Religion
  • Religious History
  • Legal History
  • Property
  • Constitutional History

Positions

Penn Law - Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History (2006- ); Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (2000-02); Professor (1998-2006); Assistant Professor (1994-98); Joint Appointment History Department (1998- )

Law Clerk to the Hon. Arlin M. Adams, U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals (1986-87)

Fellow, Center for Law and Public Affairs, Princeton University (2002-03)

Rockefeller Fellow, Center for Human Values, Princeton University (1997-98)

Pew Fellow in Religion and American History, Yale University (1997-98)

Fine, Kaplan & Black – Associate (1987-89); Trustee, Vassar College (1998-2010)

Professional Activities

Co-editor, Studies in Legal History, UNC press, 2010-present

Scholarly Editions Grant Committee, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2006

Mellon and Barra Fellowships Committee, McNeil Center for Early American History, 2006

Editorial Board, Law and History Review (2006 - present)

Chair, Investments Committee, American Society for Legal History, 2006 -

Courses

  • Church and State
  • Property
  • American Religious History
  • Legal History

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