William N Eskridge

Professor William N. Eskridge, Jr. is the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School. His primary legal academic interest has been statutory interpretation. Together with Professor Philip Frickey, he developed an innovative casebook on Legislation. In 1990-95, Professor Eskridge represented a gay couple suing for recognition of their same-sex marriage. Since then, he has published a field-establishing casebook, three monographs, and dozens of law review articles articulating a legal and political framework for proper state treatment of sexual and gender minorities. The historical materials in the book on Gaylaw formed the basis for an amicus brief he drafted for the Cato Institute and for much of the Court's (and the dissenting opinion's) analysis in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which invalidated consensual sodomy laws. His most recent books are Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003 (Viking 2008), and A Republic of Statutes: Our New American Constitution (Yale 2010) (with John Ferejohn). Professor Eskridge received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Davidson College, his masters in History from Harvard, and his J.D. from Yale. J.D., Yale, 1978 M.A., Harvard, 1974 B.A., Davidson College, 1973