John J. Hemmingson Chair in Civil Liberties and Professor of Law

E-mail
509-313-3750
Office #441
Assistant: Vicky Daniels

Education

• LL.M. Harvard Law School
• J.D. American University Washington College of Law, summa cum laude
• B.A. Carleton College, cum laude

Biography

Professor Jason Gillmer has been a member of the faculty at Gonzaga University School of Law since 2010. Professor Gillmer has also taught at Texas Wesleyan School of Law, at American University Washington College of Law, where he was a visiting professor, and Stanford Law School, where he was a teaching fellow.

Prior to teaching, Professor Gillmer clerked on the District Court of Minnesota and on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He also was an associate in the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller, and Ciresi, where he helped represent the State of Minnesota in its landmark suit against the tobacco industry to recover the health costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses.

Professor Gillmer is a legal historian whose scholarship focuses on race, slavery, and civil rights, including issues of interracial intimacy, racial identity, and racial and class ideology. Drawing on a number of legal and historical sources, Professor Gillmer is particularly interested in how the law functioned in everyday life, and his current work emphasizes the importance of local records and trial-level data in understanding history and its contours. Among his other professional activities, Professor Gillmer is the co-editor of a legal history series out of the University of Texas Press, focusing on the rich legal heritage of Texas and the Southwest.

Selected Publications

• “Crimes of Passion: The Regulation of Interracial Sex in Washington, 1855-1950,” 47 Gonzaga Law Review 393 (2012) (symposium)
• “Telling Stories of Love, Sex, and Race, in LOVING IN A POST-RACIAL WORLD: NEW LEGAL APPROACHES TO INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES AND RELATIONSHIPS,” (Kevin Noble Maillard & Rose Cuison Villazor eds., 2012).
• “Lawyers and Slaves: A Remarkable Case of Representation from the Antebellum South,” 1 University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review 47 (2011) (symposium)
• “Shades of Gray: The Life and Times of a Free Family of Color on the Texas Frontier,” 29 Minnesota Journal of Law and Inequality 33 (2011)
• “Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of Ariela Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell,” 83 Southern California Law Review 425 (2010) (invited symposium)
• “Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times,” 59 Alabama Law Review 1501 (2008) (“Top Paper” award in 2008 Southeastern Association of Law Schools’ Call for Papers Competition)
• “Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: The Local Trial of a Slave Accused of Rape,” 85 North Carolina Law Review 489 (2007)
• “Suing for Freedom: Interracial Sex, Slave Law, and Racial Identity in the Post-Revolutionary and Antebellum South,” 82 North Carolina Law Review 535 (2004)
• “Minnesota’s Tobacco Case: Recovering Damages Without Proof of Reliance Under Minnesota’s Consumer Protection Statutes,” co-authored with Gary L. Wilson, 25 William Mitchell Law Review 567 (1999)
• “United States v. Clary: Equal Protection and the Crack Statute,” 45 American University law Review 497 (1995)

Selected Presentations

• Presenter, Crimes of Passion, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Fort Worth, TX (March 2012)
• Keynote Address, Telling Stories of Love and Race, Diversity Services, California Western School of Law, San Diego, CA (Nov. 2011)
• Presenter, Crimes of Passion, Conference on Race and Criminal Justice, Gonzaga University School of Law, Spokane, WA (Sept. 2011)
• Presenter, Lawyers and Slaves, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, San Francisco, CA (June 2011)
• Keynote Address, Race and Crime: Historical Narratives, 6th Annual Statewide Diversity Conference, Washington Minority Bar Association, Seattle, WA (May 2011)
• Plenary Panel, So, Do People of Color Really Commit More Crimes?, Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System, Washington Superior Court Judges’ Spring Conference, Cle Elum, WA (May 2011)
• Presenter, Preliminary Report on Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice System, Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System, Washington Supreme Court, Olympia, WA (March 2011)
• Presenter, “Her Champion and Her Friend”: Lawyers, Slaves, and the Politics of Freedom in Galveston, Texas, Dallas Bar Association, Dallas, TX (February 2011)
• Presenter, Slave Lawyers, Lat Crit XV, Annual LatCrit Conference, Denver, CO (October 2010)
• Presenter, The Intriguing Tale of John and Sobrina: A True Story of a Slave Owner and a Slave Who Became His Wife, Annual Meeting, Texas State Historical Association, Dallas, TX. (March 2010)
• Presenter, Freedom in a Slave Country, Black History Month Speaker Series, Tarrant County Community College, Hurst, TX (February 2010)
• Presenter, Shades of Gray, Law and History Faculty Colloquium, Washington University, St. Louis, MO (November 2009)
• Presenter, Telling Stories of Love, Sex and Race, LatCrit XIV, Annual LatCrit Conference, Washington, D.C. (October 2009)
• Panelist, Author Meets Reader: Ariela Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, Denver, CO (May 2009)
• Presenter, Shades of Gray: The Life and Times of a Free Family of Color in Antebellum Texas, Faculty Colloquium, University of South Carolina School of Law, Columbia, SC (February 2009)
• Presenter, Shades of Gray: The Life and Times of a Free Family of Color in Antebellum Texas, Conference on 1808: Fighting for the Right to Dream, University of Toledo College of Law, Toledo, OH (October 2008)
• Presenter, Life in the Middle Free Blacks, Poor Whites, and the Politics of Difference in Antebellum Texas, LatCrit XIII, Annual LatCrit Conference, Seattle, WA (October 2008)
• Presenter, Complexity and Confusion in the Laws of Slavery, Conference on Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (September 2008)
• Awards Recipient and Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Annual Meeting, The Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Palm Beach, FL (August 2008)
• Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Faculty Colloquium, Stetson University College of Law, Gulfport, FL (April 2008)
• Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Colloquium on Law and Citizenship, SMU School of Law, Dallas, TX (October 2007)
• Presenter, Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, Berlin, Germany (July 2007)
• Presenter, Black, White, and Brown: Texas Interracial Cases in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Washington, DC (March 2007)
• Presenter, Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: The Local Trial of a Slave Accused of Rape, Annual Meeting, The Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Palm Beach, FL (July 2006)
• Presenter, Slave Crime, Conference on Race: Law, Culture and Policy, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC (April 2006)
• Presenter, Why Spike Lee Got it Wrong: Contemporary Black/White Relationships in Media and Film, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Syracuse, NY (March 2006)
• Presenter, Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: A Slave Accused of Rape in Antebellum Arkansas, Faculty Colloquium, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC (February 2006)
• Presenter, “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Ideology and Mythology in an Alabama Courtroom,” Conference on The Power of Stories: Intersections of Law, Culture, & Literature, University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, England (July 2005)
• Presenter, From Thomas Jefferson to Emmett Till: Rethinking Issues of Interracial Intimacy, Brown Bag Seminar, University of North Texas, Denton, TX (June 2005)
• Presenter, Scandal in the Neighborhood: A Slave Accused of Rape in the Antebellum South, Annual Meeting, The Law and Society Association, Las Vegas, NE (June 2005)
• Presenter, Sex, Race, and Mastery: A Slave Accused of Rape in the Antebellum South, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Austin, TX (March 2005)
• Presenter, Suing for Freedom, Annual Meeting, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Hartford, CT (March 2004)

Teaching Areas

• Constitutional Law
• Civil Rights
• Perspectives on the Law
• Race and the Law
• Torts

Online

• SSRN

CV

• Curriculum Vitae (PDF)