“There Isn’t a Formula”: A Conversation with Stanley N. Katz

Stanley N. Katz served as the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University from 1978 to 1986. He left to become President of the American Council of Learned Societies, the national humanities organization in the United States. When he stepped down from that position in 1997, he returned to teaching and high-level institutional service at Princeton, including as the Acting Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs from 2004 to 05 and 2016 to 17. Katz’s contributions to legal history include, in addition to a vast array of articles and the books cited in the footnotes below, his work as Editor in Chief of the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History and of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the United States Supreme Court. He has served as President of the Organization of American Historians and American Society for Legal History, as Vice President of the Research Division of the American Historical Association, and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Newberry Library, the Center for Jewish History, and many other institutions. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of American Historians. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2011.