BiographyRebecca Scott, the Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, teaches a seminar on the law in slavery and freedom as well as a course on civil rights and the boundaries of citizenship in historical perspective. Her book, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2005), received the Frederick Douglass Prize and the John Hope Franklin Prize. Among Professor Scott's recent articles are "Public Rights, Social Equality, and the Conceptual Roots of the Plessy Challenge," Michigan Law Review 106 (2008); “‘She . . . refuses to deliver up herself as the slave of your Petitioner’: Émigrés, Enslavement, and the 1808 Louisiana Digest of the Civil Laws,” Tulane European and Civil Law Forum 24 (2009); "The Atlantic World and the Road to Plessy v. Ferguson," Journal of American History (2007); and "Public Rights and Private Commerce: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary," Current Anthropology (2007). Professor Scott received an A.B. from Radcliffe College, an M. Phil. in economic history from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. She is a recent recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. See more on Prof. Scott's homepage.
Law Quadrangle Notes Articles
"Rebecca Scott's Degree of Freedom wins multiple honors," 49 L. Quadrangle Notes 3 (Fall, 2006).
"Ellsworth, Scott named distinguished university professors," 46 L. Quadrangle Notes 23 (Summer, 2003).
"Rebecca J. Scott named professor of law," 45 L. Quadrangle Notes 32 (Fall Winter, 2002).