Jason A Gillmer
Professor of Law
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Courses: Torts, Advanced Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Rights, Race and the Law Seminar
Professor Jason Gillmer has been a member of the faculty at Texas Wesleyan School of Law since 2003. Prior to teaching, Professor Gillmer clerked for Judge Donald Alsop on the District Court of Minnesota and for Judge Kim Wardlaw on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He also was an associate in the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller, and Ciresi, where he helped represent the State of Minnesota in its landmark suit against the tobacco industry to recover the health costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses. Professor Gillmer has also taught at Stanford Law School, where he was a teaching fellow in 2002-03, and at American University Washington College of Law, where he was a visiting professor in 2005-06.
Professor Gillmer’s scholarship focuses on issues of race and law in the 19th-century American South, including issues of interracial intimacy, racial identity, and racial and class ideology. Drawing on a number of legal and historical sources, Professor Gillmer is particularly interested in how the law functioned in everyday life, and his current work emphasizes the importance of local records and trial-level data in understanding history and its contours. Among his other professional activities, Professor Gillmer was the co-organizer of the 2006 conference, Too Pure an Air, an event sponsored by the Law School in Gloucester, England, that brought together scholars from around the world to discuss issues of race, justice, and the law. Professor Gillmer also was voted 1L teacher of the year in 2003-04 by both the day and evening students.
Professor Gillmer holds a LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law, where he graduated summa cum laude and served as a note and comment editor for the American University Law Review. Professor Gillmer earned his B.A. in history from Carleton College, where he graduated cum laude.
Selected Publications
“Telling Stories of Love and Race," in Anthology: The Aftermath of Loving: Interracial Marriage and Its Impact in the United States (Kevin Noble Maillard ed.) (to be published 2009-10).
“Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times,” 59 Alabama Law Review __ (to be published 2008).
“Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: The Local Trial of a Slave Accused of Rape,” 85 North Carolina Law Review 489 (2007).
“Suing for Freedom: Interracial Sex, Slave Law, and Racial Identity in the Post-Revolutionary and Antebellum South,” 82 North Carolina Law Review 535 (2004).
“Minnesota’s Tobacco Case: Recovering Damages Without Proof of Reliance Under Minnesota’s Consumer Protection Statutes,” co-authored with Gary L. Wilson, 25 William Mitchell Law Review 567 (1999).
“United States v. Clary: Equal Protection and the Crack Statute,” 45 American University Law Review 497 (1995).
Selected Presentations
Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Faculty Colloquium, Stetson University College of Law, Gulfport, Florida (April 2008).
Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Colloquium on Law and Citizenship, SMU School of Law, Dallas, TX (October 2007).
Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, Berlin, Germany (July 2007).
Presenter, Black, White, and Brown: Texas Interracial Cases in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Washington, D.C. (March 2007).
Presenter, Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: The Local Trial of a Slave Accused of Rape, Annual Meeting, The Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Palm Beach, FL (July 2006).
Presenter, Slave Crime, Conference on Race: Law, Culture and Policy, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C. (April 2006).
Presenter, Why Spike Lee Got it Wrong: Contemporary Black/White Relationships in Media and Film, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Syracuse, NY (March 2006).
Presenter, Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: A Slave Accused of Rape in Antebellum Arkansas, Faculty Colloquium, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C. (February 2006).
Presenter, “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Ideology and Mythology in an Alabama Courtroom,” Conference on The Power of Stories: Intersections of Law, Culture, & Literature, University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, England (July 2005).
Presenter, From Thomas Jefferson to Emmett Till: Rethinking Issues of Interracial Intimacy, Brown Bag Seminar, University of North Texas, Denton, TX (June 2005).
Presenter, Scandal in the Neighborhood: A Slave Accused of Rape in the Antebellum South, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, Las Vegas, NV (June 2005).
Presenter, Sex, Race, and Mastery: A Slave Accused of Rape in the Antebellum South, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Austin, TX (March 2005).
Presenter, Suing for Freedom, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Hartford, CT (March 2004).
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