William M. Wiecek
Constitutional Historian
Chester Adgate Congdon Professor of Public Law and Legislation Emeritus, Syracuse University
Professor Wiecek practiced law in New Hampshire and taught legal and constitutional history at the University of Missouri-Columbia for 16 years before heading to the College of Law at Syracuse University. He has written or edited eleven books, as well as numerous articles and chapters, on slavery and its abolition, republicanism, nineteenth-century constitutional development, nuclear power, and the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Wiecek wrote Volume 12 of the Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Birth of the Modern Constitution: The United States Supreme Court, 1941-1953, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, explores the chief-justiceships of Harlan Fiske Stone and Fred Vinson.
He has taught courses in legal and constitutional history, constitutional law, property, race and law, corporations, civil procedure, and Roman law. Before retiring in 2008, he also held a joint appointment as Professor of History in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Professor Wiecek received the University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 1997 and in 2001 the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement, the highest academic award conferred by Syracuse University.
