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 James F. Simon
Martin Professor of Law
Dean Emeritus
A nationally recognized scholar of constitutional law and award-winning author of seven books on American history, law, and politics, James F. Simon uses issues that surface in his classroom as a jumping-off point for his academic research.
"It's a natural outgrowth of my teaching interests," Dean Simon says of his latest constitutional history, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney has been praised by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as "exciting and notable" and by Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer as "a riveting, accessible, and ingenious study."
Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney follows the publication of Simon's best selling history, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (Simon & Schuster, 2002).
In a review in The New York Times Book Review, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph J. Ellis called What Kind of Nation "a major contribution."
Historian Richard Norton Smith wrote in a separate review, “Thanks to James Simon’s graceful, gripping narrative, we can experience as never before the dramatic rivalry between the libertarian Jefferson and his towering nationalist of a cousin, John Marshall. Brilliantly told by a scholar at the peak of his powers.”
Dean Simon credits three professors at Yale, where he earned both a bachelor’s and a law degree, with stimulating his interest in American history and constitutional law. Professor John Morton Blum’s undergraduate course on twentieth-century American history first drew him to the study of history.
At Yale Law School, he was pulled toward constitutional law by two professors with very different approaches to the U.S. Constitution: Alexander Bickel, who was “a marvelous teacher and a great thinker,” and Fred Rodell, who conveyed “a much more human and political component to the subject.”
Apart from his Yale degrees, Dean Simon’s academic credentials include a Ford Foundation Africa-Asia Fellowship to work and study in India; a year as a Harvard Fellow in Law and the Humanities; and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from New York Law School in 1992.
While a correspondent and contributing editor of Time magazine, specializing in legal affairs, Dean Simon analyzed U.S. Supreme Court cases, wrote profiles of outstanding legal educators, lawyers, and judges, and covered major trials. He began teaching as a visiting lecturer in American Studies at Yale University and has since lectured widely both in the United States and abroad.
As dean of New York Law School from 1983 to 1992, he successfully fulfilled several longstanding goals: sweeping renovation of the facilities, strengthening the faculty, and heightening public perception of the Law School’s accomplishments.
Dean Simon has served on the Board of Trustees at New York Law School and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He has received numerous awards and honors including The New York Times’s “Notable Book,” a Certificate of Merit and the 1974 Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and the 1981 Scribes Book Award from the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects.
He lives with his wife Marcia in West Nyack, where he finds time for a variety of non-professional pursuits including opera; bird-watching; sports; and reading nineteenth-and twentieth-century fiction, biography and history in particular. Dean Simon has three grown children and three grandchildren.
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Contact information:
T: 212-431-2352
F: 212-431-3295
E: jsimon@nyls.edu
O: A905
Assistant: Cathy Jenkins
T: 212-431-2337
E: cjenkins@nyls.edu
Education:
Yale, B.A. 1961; LL.B. 1964
New York Law School, LL.D. 1992
Ford Foundation Africa-Asia Fellowship, India, 1964-65
Law and Humanities Fellowship, Harvard, 1974-75
Dean, New York Law School, 1983–92. Award-winning author of books on modern Supreme Court and its justices. Former correspondent and contributing editor of Time magazine.
Courses:
Constitutional Law I & II
Legal Journalism
Modern Supreme Court
At New York Law School since 1975.
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