Bruce P. Smith

Dean
Guy Raymond Jones Faculty Scholar
Co-Director, Illinois Legal History Program

Phone: 217-244-8446 Email: smithb@illinois.edu B.A. Williams College M.A. University of Cambridge J.D. Yale Law School Ph.D. Yale University Courses American Legal History History of Anglo-American Criminal Procedure Intellectual Property Law and Regulation of Cyberspace Property Seminar: Great Books (Legal History) Trademark and Unfair Competition Vita Low Resolution Photo (~550k jpg) High Resolution Photo (~2Mb jpg)

Bruce P. Smith, a noted legal historian and award-winning law professor, was named Dean of the University of Illinois College of Law in January 2009, becoming the century-old college's 12th dean and the Guy Raymond Jones Faculty Scholar. Dean Smith, who joined the law faculty in 2001, served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs prior to assuming the deanship. In 2008, he was one of two recipients of the university's prestigious Campus Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching, which recognizes excellence in the classroom, innovative approaches to teaching, and other contributions to improved instruction. Dean Smith, whose research focuses on Anglo-American criminal procedure in the 18th and 19th centuries, has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews and is currently completing two book manuscripts: History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (with John Langbein and Renée Lettow Lerner) and Summary Justice: Magistrates, Theft, and the Law in London and the Urban Atlantic World, 1760-1860. Dean Smith also possesses considerable expertise in the field of intellectual property law. Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, he practiced law for five years at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., working primarily in patent litigation, employment law, and sports law, representing the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League. Dean Smith has taught as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and The George Washington University Law School, as an instructor at the University of Oxford and the University of Victoria, and as an invited lecturer at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dean Smith received his B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Honors in History from Williams College and B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Herchel Smith Fellow. He received his J.D. and Ph.D. in History from Yale, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. At Yale, he served as a Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Legal History Fellow.