Mary Sarah Bilder
Boston College
Professor – Law
Professor Mary Sarah Bilder is the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. Her latest book, Female Genius: George Washington and Eliza Harriot in the Dawn of the Constitution will be published in early 2022. Her previous book, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (2015), was awarded the 2016 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and was named a finalist for the 2016 George Washington Book Prize. She has taught at Boston College since 1994 and also has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. She teaches in the areas of property, American legal and constitutional history, and trusts and estates. She received her B.A. with Honors (English) and the Dean’s Prize from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, her J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School, and her A.M. (History) and Ph.D. from Harvard University in the History of American Civilization/American Studies. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Francis Murnaghan, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. Her recent scholarship has focused on the history of the Constitution, transatlantic feminism, James Madison and the Founders, the history of judicial review, and colonial and founding era constitutionalism, as well as Robert Morris, the early African American civil rights activist and lawyer. Professor Bilder is Literary Director of the Ames Foundation and a member of the American Law Institute, the American Antiquarian Association, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the State Bar of Wisconsin (inactive status). She twice received the Emil Slizewski Faculty Teaching Award. She is also the author of The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (2004), awarded the Littleton-Griswold Award from the American Historical Association. Her articles appear in important collected volumes of essays and a wide variety of prestigious journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, Law and History Review, Law Library Journal, and the Journal of Policy History. She is co-compiler of the prize-winning Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue.