Mary Sarah Bilder (Law)

Promoted to full professor

JD, Ph.D., Harvard University

Faculty member since 1994

Specialization: Legal culture, lawyering, and women’s property rights in the American colonial period

Representative publication: The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Culture and the Empire (Harvard University Press, forthcoming)

“For my book, I read all the cases that were appealed to England out of the colony of Rhode Island between 1630 and the Revolution. I particularly liked all of the family fights over who was going to get the land, the house, the money. One of the cases involved a childless man who wanted to leave everything to his wife when he died because, he said, she was the best friend he had in the world. His brother sued to make sure she couldn’t get any of it. In the end, the brother won. There’s a lot in my book about commercial law and statutes, but it’s that kind of human story that comes out that I really love.”