Thursday, December 18, 2014

Judith Kelleher Schafer (1942-2014)

Judith Kelleher Schafer
[We're sorry to pass on news of the death of another important contributor to American legal history.]

Judith Kelleher Schafer obtained a BA from H. Sophie Newcomb College, and an MA and PhD in History from Tulane University. She was both a highly regarded scholar and professor of American history and legal history at Tulane University and Tulane University Law School where she worked for over 30 years. Dr. Schafer published numerous articles and essays in law reviews and historical journals. She also published three books: Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (winner of the Francis Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association and the Kemper Williams award of the Louisiana Historical Association; Becoming Free, Manumission and Enslavement in Antebellum New Orleans; and Brothels, Depravity and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum in New Orleans, winner of the Gulf Coast Historical Association’s book prize for 2011.

She served as the President of the Louisiana Historical Association and Associate Director of the Murphy Institute for Political Economy. She was a member of the American Society for Legal History, the Southern Historical Association, and the Louisiana Historical Association, where she served as president in 2002 and was elected to the Company of Fellows. The organization honored her scholarship with the McGinty Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

Hat tip: Victoria Saker Woeste