James F. Simon

Martin Professor of Law Emeritus
Dean Emeritus

James F. Simon is the author of eight books on American history, law, and politics. His most recent book, FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal (Simon & Schuster, 2012), has received widespread critical acclaim. Jeffrey Toobin praised FDR and Chief Justice Hughes as an “elegant dual biography of the incomparable FDR and a formidable Chief Justice” and Bob Woodward described it as “a spectacular book, brilliantly conceived and executed.” FDR and Chief Justice Hughes follows the publication of Simon's Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers (Simon & Schuster, 2007), which was commended by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as “exciting and notable” and by Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer as “a riveting, accessible, and ingenious study.” His book, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (Simon & Schuster, 2002), was named a NewYork Times Notable Book and called “a major contribution" by Joseph J. Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers.

In addition to FDR and Chief Justice Hughes, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney and What Kind of Nation, Simon is the author of several award-winning judicial biographies and histories, including Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas, The Antagonists: Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black and Civil Liberties in Modern America and The Center Holds: The Power Struggle Inside the Rehnquist Court. Simon has also contributed to the Oxford Companion to United States History and Collier’s Encyclopedia. He has written book reviews for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Stanford University and Columbia University law reviews. He served as an on-camera commentator for the PBS documentary on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Simon is the Martin Professor of Law Emeritus and Dean Emeritus at New York Law School. He received a B.A. from Yale College and a law degree from the Yale Law School. He was the recipient of a Ford Foundation Africa-Asia Fellowship to work and study in India. He was awarded an honorary LL.D. from New York Law School.

Simon has served as correspondent and contributing editor of Time magazine, specializing in legal affairs. He has been a Visiting Lecturer in American Studies at Yale University and a Harvard Fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard University. He has lectured widely both in the United States and abroad.