The Florence Summer Law Program has provided an opportunity for Gonzaga Law students to study comparative and international law in the center of Florence, Italy. The Gonzaga in Florence campus is located in the heart of the University District of Florence, in the center of the cultural and historical center of Florence, Italy. Steeped in the commitment to global justice and the connections between the interdependent systems of international law, the Florence Summer Law Program has provided the opportunity to study in a fully ABA accredited school, internationally.
Biography: Professor Jason Gillmer
Jason Gillmer is a Professor of Law and the inaugural holder of the John J. Hemmingson Chair in Civil Liberties. He is also the Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Before Gonzaga, Professor Gillmer was on the faculty at Texas A&M Law School (formerly Texas Wesleyan). He has also taught at American University, Washington College of Law as visiting professor. He began his academic career as a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School.
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 with a particular interest in the antebellum South, the conquest of the American West, and the Civil Rights era. Drawing on a number of legal and historical sources, Professor Gillmer focuses on 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. He is the author of Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821-1871 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017), as well as several law review articles, essays, and book chapters. He is a frequent speaker on issues of race, law, and civil rights.
Professor Gillmer teaches in the areas of Torts, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, and Race and the Law. He is a seven-time recipient of his school’s “professor of the year” award. Among his many professional activities, Professor Gillmer is a Commission Member of the Washington Supreme Court Minority and Justice Commission and a Board Member of the Washington Supreme Court Historical Society.
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.