Jason Gillmer is the John J. Hemmingson Professor of Civil Liberties and a Professor of Law. He is also the Founding Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, serving in that role from 2017 until 2026. Before joining Gonzaga, Professor Gillm...
LL.M., Harvard Law School
J.D., American University, Washington College of Law, summa cum laude
B.A., Carleton College, cum laude
Advanced Torts
Civil Rights
Constitutional Law
Race and the Law
Torts
Jason Gillmer is the John J. Hemmingson Professor of Civil Liberties and a Professor of Law. He is also the Founding Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, serving in that role from 2017 until 2026. Before joining Gonzaga, Professor Gillmer was on the faculty at Texas A&M Law School (formerly Texas Wesleyan). He also taught as a visiting professor at American University Washington College of Law. He began his academic career as a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School.
Professor Gillmer is a legal historian with a particular interest in the antebellum South, Gold Rush California, and the Civil Rights era. Drawing on a wide range of legal and historical sources, his work examines 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. Professor Gillmer is the author of Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821-1871 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017)—a finalist in the 2017 Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book, Texas Institute of Letters. He has also authored multiple law review articles, essays, book chapters, and book reviews, publishing in such places as the North Carolina Law Review (twice), the Alabama Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Loyola Los Angeles Law Review, and the Michigan Journal of Law & Society. His article, “Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times,” 59 Alabama Law Review 1501 (2008), received the “Top Paper” award in the 2008 Southeastern Association of Law Schools’ Call for Papers Competition.
As Founding Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights from 2017-2026, Professor Gillmer helped advance the Law School’s mission to create a nationally-recognized civil and human rights program that enriches the educational experience of students, furthers the common good, and contributes substantially to the policy and practice of civil and human rights.
Professor Gillmer teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, Torts, Advanced Torts, and Race and the Law. He is a seven-time recipient of his school’s “Professor of the Year” award. Among his professional activities, Professor Gillmer served for many years on the Washington Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Civil Rights. He is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Prior to entering academia, 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 has a LL.M. from Harvard Law School, a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law, and a B.A. in history from Carleton College.
Books
Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821-1871 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017) (finalist for the Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book, Texas Institute of Letters, 2017)
Law Reviews, Essays, and Book Chapters
A California Pioneer: Cornelius Cole, Slave Law, and the Crisis of the Union (work in progress)
Slavery in a Free State: California’s Fugitive Slave Act and the Coming of the Civil War, Cal. S.Ct. Hist. Soc’y Rev. (forthcoming 2026) [SSRN]
Pearson v. Pearson: A Story of Slavery, Marriage, and the West, Told in Black and White, 3 Mich. J. of Law & Soc’y. 1 (2024) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
Litigating Slavery’s Reach: A Story of Race, Rights, and the Law During the California Gold Rush, 56 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 499 (2023) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
The Life of the Law, in Teaching Legal History: Comparative Perspectives (Wildy, Simmonds & Hill) (2014)
Boston Strong: Understanding Hatred, Confronting Intolerance, Eliminating Inequality, 49 Gonz. L. Rev. ix (2013/14) (symposium introduction) [SSRN]
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) [SSRN]
Crimes of Passion: The Regulation of Interracial Sex in Washington, 1855-1950, 47 Gonz. L. Rev. 393 (2012) (symposium contribution) [SSRN]
Shades of Gray: The Life and Times of a Free Family of Color on the Texas Frontier, 29 Minn. J. Law & Ineq. 33 (2011) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
Lawyers and Slaves: A Remarkable Case of Representation from the Antebellum South, 1 U. Miami Race & Soc. Just. L. Rev. 47 (2011) (symposium contribution) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of What Blood Won’t Tell, 83 S. Cal. L. Rev 425 (2010) (symposium contribution) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Times, 59 Ala. L. Rev. 1501 (2008) (“Top Paper” award in 2008 Southeastern Association of Law Schools’ Call for Papers Competition) [SSRN]
Poor Whites, Benevolent Masters, and the Ideologies of Slavery: The Local Trial of a Slave Accused of Rape, 85 N.C. L. Rev. 489 (2007) [Journal Website] [SSRN]
Suing for Freedom: Interracial Sex, Slave Law, and Racial Identity in the Post-Revolutionary and Antebellum South, 82 N.C. L. Rev. 535 (2004) [SSRN]
Minnesota’s Tobacco Case: Recovering Damages Without Proof of Reliance Under Minnesota’s Consumer Protection Statutes, 25 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 567 (1999) (with Gary L. Wilson) [Journal Website]
United States v. Clary: Equal Protection and the Crack Statute, 45 Am. U.L. Rev. 497 (1995) (student note) [Journal Website]
Book Reviews
Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South, by Kimberly M. Welch, 21 Civil War Book Review (Winter 2019) (book review) [Journal Website]
The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History, by Anne C. Bailey, 85 J. of So. Hist. 166 (2019) (book review) [Journal Website]
Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861, by Earl Maltz, 52 Am. J. of Legal Hist. 411 (2012) (book review) [Journal Website]
Edmund J. Davis of Texas: Civil War General, Republican Leader, Reconstruction Governor, by Carl H. Moneyhon, 77 J. of So. Hist. 735 (2011) (book review) [Journal Website]
What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, by Ariela Gross, 28 Law & Hist. Rev. 1087 (2010) (book review) [Journal Website]
Law and Society in the South: A History of North Carolina Court Cases, by John W. Wertheimer 25 Continuity and Change: A
