Professor Farah Peterson Delivers 2024 Cutler Lecture
On February 6, 2024, Professor Farah Peterson of the University of Chicago Law School presented the annual James Goold Cutler Lecture to William & Mary Law School students, faculty, and guests.
A renowned legal historian, Peterson spoke on “The Fourteenth Amendment and the Vénus Noire.” During her talk, she drew parallels between the Vénus Noire motif in art and Constitutional interpretation. She argued that each change to the Constitution alters its meaning and transforms it into a new document just as new interpretations change old art.
Peterson’s research focuses on the early American republic. Her scholarship on statutory interpretation and constitutional law has appeared or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and elsewhere.
Peterson earned her bachelor’s in history from Yale and her J.D. from Yale Law School, and she also holds a Ph.D. in American history from Princeton. After law school, she clerked for Associate Justice Stephen Breyer on the US Supreme Court and Judge Guido Calabresi on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, both of whom were recipients of the Marshall-Wythe Medallion, the highest honor conferred by William & Mary’s law faculty.
The Cutler Lecture series is William & Mary Law School’s preeminent lecture series on constitutional law, established by an endowment from James Goold Cutler, a mayor of Rochester, N.Y., and national figure in Republican politics. Although not a lawyer, Cutler had a keen interest in constitutional law and established the lectures in 1927 to promote interest and dialogue on the subject and celebrate the scholars studying emerging frontiers of constitutional law. The original series ran from 1928-44, and the lectures were revived in 1980-81.
Like all Cutler Lectures, Peterson’s lecture will be published in the William & Mary Law Review and available to view online.