΢���ƽ�

I am a Classicist, historian, and lawyer whose research seeks to illuminate how legal institutions, social forces, and human psychology have interacted over time to shape the dynamic lived reality of law at various times and scales.

 

My first book, Laws of All the Greeks: International Law as Social Reality in Ancient Greece, is under contract to be published soon by Oxford University Press. It explores the social and psychological factors that made international law effective in the Greek world. Combining the findings of legal sociology and social psychology, scholarship on Greek identity and social networks, and analysis of documentary and literary sources, I show how the webs of identity binding the Greek world together affected both the rules of Greek international law and their effectiveness at guiding legal and economic behavior.

 

In my other current large project I am uncovering the roots of the rhetorical heart of American law by tracing the long tradition of courtroom persuasion from ancient Greece and Rome to modern American courts. This involves starting from the origins of classical legal rhetoric in Athens and following its path through the Roman republic and empire, Byzantium, Renaissance Italy, and early modern England to the United States. I hope to show just how it happened that ancient Greek tools of courtroom persuasion such as character evidence, reasoning from probability, and emotional appeals to persuade an audience of jurors, arbitrators, or judges are alive and well in American courtrooms.

 

Photo by Ferrante Ferranti.