In August, Prof. Jonathon Booth will join the Colorado Law faculty as Associate Professor. Booth is a historian of democracy, race, law, and policing in the United States. He teaches courses including Criminal Law, American Legal History, and Law and History of Policing.
Booth’s research reaches from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and focuses on the practical impact of law and its enforcement – in other words, how the law tangibly affects Americans. He is currently working on articles entitled “Policing After Slavery: Race, Crime, and Resistance in Atlanta” and “The Legal Architecture of Emancipation.”
Before coming to Colorado, Jonathon served as the Legal History Fellow at the Harvard History Design Studio and clerked for the Hon. Barrington D. Parker on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Hon. Kevin McNulty on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2021 and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2019. He received his B.A. in History and Economics, joint honours, from McGill University.
In this Q&A, Prof. Booth sits down with Colorado Law’s Emily Battaglia to share a bit more about his work.
How has your PhD in history helped inform your work as a legal scholar and teacher?
JB: I’ve found that there is a great deal of overlap between the skills that make a great historian and those that make a great lawyer – at least on the litigation side. In both cases, you have to locate relevant evidence, read sources closely, and use those sources to build convincing arguments. Vitally, you must also be aware of alternative ways that the facts and sources could be interpreted, and how someone else could use those same sources to reach a different conclusion. This is why, whenever I talk to undergraduates who are interested in applying to law school, I encourage them to major in History.
The other major lesson I’ve gained from studying the history of the Americas over the past 250 years is the importance of taking a broad view of the law. The law does not develop in a vacuum. Looking solely at cases and statutes, rather than politics and economics, can result in a blinkered understanding of how and why legal change occurs. This is one of the core points I plan to emphasize in my American Legal History course that I will be teaching this fall. I hope to take a similar approach in my Criminal Law course as well – I’ve found that students have an easier time understanding and remembering doctrine when it is placed within a broader context.
What inspired you to pursue a career at the intersection of history and the law?
JB: I began by studying history. During my time at McGill, I took several courses on the history of slavery and emancipation and focused specifically on the history of criminal justice and convict leasing in the post-emancipation South. This research led, more or less directly, into my dissertation work, which compared the legal development of the United States and Jamaica after emancipation.
I realized quickly that I would need to know a lot more about the law to do this project well, and I applied to Harvard Law School during the second year of my Ph.D. I was lucky enough to receive a full tuition scholarship, take a wide variety of courses, and work with law school faculty including Annette Gordon-Reed and Kenneth Mack.
After graduating law school, I finished up my dissertation and went on to clerk at the District of New Jersey and Second Circuit. In those two years I helped to draft dozens of opinions – including some that required historical research – and became convinced that I wanted to spend my career teaching, writing, and thinking about the law.
What excites you most about life in Colorado?
JB: I’ve never lived in the Mountain West – in fact, I’ve never really lived west of the Hudson River. I’m looking forward to exploring the region and hope to take some trips to national parks before the semester starts. I’m also looking forward to being involved in the local community in Boulder and beyond.
Can you share a bit about any current projects you are working on?
JB: I’m currently working on an article entitled “The Legal Architecture of Emancipation.” This article examines how formally colorblind laws can still promote racial discrimination. It looks at a moment of American legal history that is frequently skipped over: the time between the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s and the rise of Jim Crow in the 1890s. During these two decades, the direction of the South was uncertain and political power remained contested.
After they regained power, however, white Democrats begin to pass laws that cemented their political and economic power, but still complied with the letter of the non-discrimination provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. To take one example: Georgia passed a series of laws that barred sharecroppers from selling cotton at nighttime in order to force them to sell to their landlords, rather than travel to a town to get a better price. These laws, however, did not apply throughout the state. Instead, they were written to apply only to counties with large Black populations.
I am also at the very early stages of a book project entitled Policing the Rural South, 1850–2020. One thing that has really jumped out at me studying the history of policing (I will be teaching a seminar on police history next year) is that almost all of the scholarship focuses on cities. Yet, until the twentieth century, most of the American population lived in rural areas. I hope that this book will capture the transformation in rural law enforcement over the last century and a half and show how changes in technology and the rural economy shaped how rural communities were policed.
What is your proudest career accomplishment so far?
JB: There are several cases that I was particularly proud to have contributed to, including affirming the legality of rent control in New York City. But beyond that, the accomplishments that have meant the most to me have been seeing my students succeed. There’s nothing like having a student get in touch to tell you that they’ve gotten into law or graduate school or gotten the job they’ve been working toward. I am excited to continue having those experiences teaching and mentoring students at Colorado Law.