Lincolns Code: Related Audio & Video

Keynote Address, University of Alabama Law School, March 2012; “Two Humanitarianisms”

The Civil War and the Law of War

ASIL’s Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict and the American Red Cross sponsored a historical panel discussion on the application of the law of war in the American Civil War, in remembrance of the 150th anniversary of that conflict. Military historians and law of war experts Gary Solis, Isabelle Daoust, and Richard Jackson will presented historical vignettes, describing the application of the law of war (often referred to as international humanitarian law) to the Civil War.

The American Civil War: Legacies for Our Own Time

David Brion Davis Lecture, Yale University, March 28, 2012

Lincoln’s Code: The Puzzling History of the Laws of War

John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law, Inaugural Lecture.An expert in American legal history, John Fabian Witt joined Yale Law School in 2009 and was named the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law in March 2010. He is also a Professor of History at Yale. He previously taught at Columbia Law School for eight years and was a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas in the Fall of 2004 and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the spring of 2005.He has written extensively about the history of American law and torts. His books include Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law; The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law; and the forthcoming Lincoln’s Code: War and Humanity in America. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 2010-2011 for his project on the laws of war in American history.Professor Witt earned three degrees from Yale: his B.A. in history summa cum laude in 1994, his J.D. in 1999, and his Ph.D. in history in 2000. He joined the Columbia law faculty in 2001, after clerking for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.The Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professorship of Law was created in 1990 through the generosity of David A. Jones ’60 and Betty Jones and members of the 1960 graduating class, on the occasion of their thirtieth reunion, to honor the memory of their deceased classmate, Allen H. Duffy ’60, a highly respected New Haven practitioner.

CICL/LENS lecture at Duke
Sherman at Atlanta: The Moral Structure of the Laws of War