Professor Thomas McSweeney Honored with 2026 Walter L. Williams, Jr., Memorial Teaching Award

Each year, the graduating class selects the recipient of the Walter L. Williams, Jr., Memorial Teaching Award in memory of the late Walter L. Williams, Jr., an outstanding teacher and member of the faculty from 1972 to 1991.

This year’s recipient is Professor of Law Thomas J. McSweeney, a specialist in legal history whose research focuses on the early history of the common law. McSweeney teaches Property, Trusts & Estates, The Legal Profession: A Historical Approach, History of the Common Law, and directed readings: English Law Before the Norman Conquest, Roman Law, Canon Law, and Jewish Law.

McSweeney earned his B.A. from William & Mary, where he was a James Monroe Scholar. He continued his studies at Cornell University, where he earned a J.D. and a Ph.D. in medieval history.

Since joining the William & Mary faculty in 2013, McSweeney has received many awards honoring his teaching and scholarship, including the Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence (2018), the Walter Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching (2019), the Robert and Elizabeth Scott Research Professorship (2020), the 1L Professor of the Year Award (2021), the William & Mary Alumni Association's Faculty Fellowship Award (2022), and the McGlothlin Award for Exceptional Teaching (2025).

McSweeney's research focuses on the early history of the English common law. He is particularly interested in the ways the judges and lawyers of the thirteenth century taught and learned the law. His book, "Priests of the Law: Roman Law and the Making of the Common Law's First Professionals" (Oxford University Press 2019), which was awarded an honorable mention for the Selden Society's David Yale Prize , examines the ways in which thirteenth-century justices modelled their practices on those of the jurists of Roman law to make the case that the English common law was part of a pan-European legal culture.

McSweeeny is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He also sits on the board of directors of the Ames Foundation at Harvard Law School, which funds research in legal history, and in November of 2021 began a five-year term as an editor for Cambridge Studies in Legal History, the American Society for Legal History's book series at Cambridge University Press.

A devoted alumnus of William & Mary, Professor McSweeney has also written on the history of the college. His article A University in 1693, co-authored with law students Katharine Ello and Elsbeth O'Brien, argues that William & Mary was awarded the status of a university in its 1693 charter, and thus has a claim to the title of oldest university in the United States.