Professor

1000 LaSalle Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Office Location: MSL 340
J.D., Catholic University of America
J.C.L., Catholic University of America
Ph.D., History of Medieval Law, Cornell University
B.A., University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Charles J. Reid, Jr. was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he majored in Latin, Classics, and History, and also did substantial coursework in classical Greek and modern European languages. It was during his undergraduate days that he developed an interest in canon law, doing a year of directed research in Roman and canon law under the supervision of James Brundage.
Reid then attended the Catholic University of America, where he earned J.D. and J.C.L. (license in canon law) degrees. During his time at Catholic University, he organized a series of symposia on the bishops' pastoral letter on nuclear arms. The proceedings of these symposia were published under Reid's editorship as "Peace in a Nuclear Age: The Bishops' Pastoral Letter in Perspective" (Catholic University of America Press, 1986). This book was called by the New York Times "among the most scholarly and unsettling of responses" to the pastoral letter (December 28, 1986).
Reid then attended Cornell University, where he earned a Ph.D. in the history of medieval law under the supervision of Brian Tierney. His thesis at Cornell was on the Christian, medieval origins of the western concept of individual rights. Over the last ten years, he has published a number of articles on the history of western rights thought, and is currently completing work on a book manuscript addressing this question.
In 1991, Reid was appointed research associate in law and history at the Emory University School of Law, where he has worked closely with Harold Berman on the history of western law. He collaborated with Professor Berman on articles on the Lutheran legal science of the sixteenth century, the English legal science of the seventeenth century, and the flawed premises of Max Weber's legal historiography.
While at Emory, Reid has also pursued a research agenda involving scholarship on the history of western notions of individual rights; the history of liberty of conscience in America; and the natural-law foundations of the jurisprudence of Judge John Noonan. He has also published articles on various aspects of the history of the English common law. He has had the chance to apply legal history in a forensic setting, serving as an expert witness in litigation involving the religious significance of Christian burial. Additionally, Reid has taught a seminar on the contribution of medieval canon law to the shaping of western constitutionalism. Recently, Reid has become a featured blogger at the Huffington Post on current issues where religion, law and politics intersect.
| Number | Title | Credits | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 610 | Contracts | 4 | ||
| Description of course 610 : | This course will examine the fundamental principles governing the enforcement of promises in the legal system. Students will explore topics such as the formation of con- tracts, excuses for performance of contractual obligations, breach of contracts, remedies for breach and the rights of third parties. In the context of contract law, students will develop their analytical skills using the common law, as well as statutory (e.g. the Uniform Commercial Code) and secondary (e.g., the Restatement (Second) of Contracts) authorities. | |||
| 710 | Jurisprudence | 3 | ||
| Description of course 710 : | This course will consider the answers offered by leading legal philosophers to the question, "What is law?" Students will review the major jurisprudential schools, including natural law, both classical and modern, positivism, and the historical school, the philosophical foundation of English common law and the doctrine of precedent. The course will examine developments in jurisprudence such as legal realism, legal pragmatism, and law and economics. Additionally, students will consider the relationship of religious faith to law and belief in natural rights. | |||
| 765 | Remedies | 3 | ||
| Description of course 765 : | This course will focus broadly upon both legal and equitable remedies. The underlying goals and objectives of awarding remedies will be discussed, as well as the various legal vehicles available to obtain those goals and also whether the law adequately and appropriately achieves those goals. A wide range of both substitutionary and specific remedies will be discussed in depth, with particular attention upon compensatory damages (and related doctrines), injunctive relief, punitive remedies, ancillary remedies (such as contempt, collection, attorneys' fees, and others) and remedial defenses. | |||
| 877 | Westrn Legal Hstry of Marriage | 3 | ||
| Description of course 877 : | This course will cover the several millenia history of mar- riage as a legal relationship in western civilization. Enrollment will be limited to 15. | |||
| 899 | Great Books Seminar | 3 | ||
| Description of course 899 : | ||||
| 950 | Supervised Resrch & Writing | .5 | ||
| Description of course 950 : | Under the supervision of a faculty member, a student may receive up to two hours of course credit for researching and writing a substantial paper on a topic of the student's own choosing. The student must receive the instructor's per- mission to enroll in this course and must meet periodically with the instructor for discussion, review and evaluation. Each faculty member may supervise the research of no more than five students each semester. | |||
History of Western Law
The most important idea in my scholarship is the centrality of rights to legal analysis, even in areas we do not commonly think of as rights-based. This is the theme of my book, Power Over the Body, Equality in the Family, which explores the origins of rightsbased thinking even in matrimonial
law. I explore the medieval origins of the concept “marital rights.” I followed this book with a series of articles exploring what is natural and what is contingent in American marriage law of the last 150 years.
Upcoming: Completing my book, Lucifer’s Children, exploring the ideas of sexual freedom within and outside of marriage, and embarking on research involving civilization and norm-creation.
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Power over the Body, Equality in the Family: Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon Law (Eerdmans 2004).
Peace in a Nuclear Age: The Bishops’ Pastoral Letter in Perspective (Charles J. Reid, Jr. ed., Cath. U. of Am. Press 1986).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Marriage in Its Procreative Dimensions: The Meaning of the Institution of Marriage Throughout the Ages, in Augustine and Modern Law 481 (Richard O. Brooks & James Bernard Murphy eds., Ashgate 2011).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Rights of Self-Defense and Justified Warfare in the Writings of the Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Canonists, in Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of James A. Brundage 73 (Kenneth Pennington & Melodie Harris Eichbauer eds., Ashgate Pub. 2011).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Right to Life and Its Application to the Welfare of Children in the Canon Law and Magisterium of the Catholic Church: 1878 to the Present, in Best Love of the Child: Being Loved and Being Taught to Love as the First Human Right 142 (Timothy Jackson ed., William B. Eerdmans Publ’g Co. 2011).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Rights of the Child in Medieval Canon Law, in The Vocation of the Child 243 (Patrick Brennan, ed., William B. Eerdmans Publ’g Co. 2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., ‘When the Popes Ruled in England, Those Were Called the Dark Ages’: Images of the Medieval Papacy and Medieval Canon Law as Instruments of Repression in Nineteenth-Century American Judicial Thought, 12 Proc. Internat’l Congress Medieval Canon L. 997 (2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Paulus Vladimiri, The Tractatus, Opinio Hostiensis, and the Rights of Infidels, in Sacri Canones Servandi Sunt: Ius Canonicum et Status Ecclesiae Saeculis XIII – XV (Pavel Krafl ed., Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences 2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Sexual Virtue, Sexual Vice, and the Requirements of the Good Society: Lessons from Ancient Rome, in What’s The Harm: Does Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Really Harm Individuals, Families, or Society? (Lynn Wardle ed., University Press of America 2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Disposal of the Dead: And What It Tells Us About American Society and Law, in Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past 428 (Wilfred M. McClay ed., William B. Eerdmans Publ’g Co. 2007).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Marriage in the Western Legal Tradition: A Product of Natural Law or a Creature of the State? in The Family in the New Millenium: World Voices Supporting the “Natural” Clan 3 (A. Scott Loveless and Thomas B. Holman eds., Praeger Publishers 2007).
Charles J. Reid, Jr. The Religious Conscience and the State in U.S. Constitutional Law, 1789-2001, in Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America 63 (Hugh Heclo & Wilfred M. McClay eds., Johns Hopkins U. Press 2003).
John Maxcy Zane, The Story of Law (Foreword, annotations and bibliographies by Charles J. Reid, Liberty Fund 1998).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Tales Legal Fictions Tell, Nw. Interdisc. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2013).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Devil Comes to Kansas: A Story of Free Love, Sexual Privacy, and the Law, 19 Mich. J. Gender & L. 71 (2012).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Marriage in Its Procreative Dimension: The Meaning of the Institution of Marriage throughout the Ages, 6 U. St. Thomas L.J. 454 (2009).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Marriage: Its Relationship to Religion, Law, and the State, 68 Jurist 252 (2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Judicial Precedent in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Commentary on Chancellor Kent’s Commentaries, 5 Ave Maria L. Rev. 47 (2007).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., And the State Makes Three: Should the State Retain a Role in Recognizing Marriage?, 27 Cardozo L. Rev. 1277 (2006).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Three Great Antinomies of Modern Legal Positivism and Their Resolution in Christian Legal Thought, 18 Regent U. L. Rev. 53 (2005).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Edward Douglass White’s Use of Roman and Canon Law: A Study in the Supreme Court’s Use of Foreign Legal Citations, 3 U. St. Thomas L.J. 281 (2005).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Toward an Understanding of Medieval Universal Rights: The Marital Rights of Non-Christians in Early Scholastic and Canonistic Writings, 3 Ave Maria L. Rev. 95 (2005).
Gregory C. Sisk & Charles J. Reid, Jr., Abortion, Bishops, Eucharist, and Politicians: A Question of Communion, 43 Cath. Law. 255 (2004).
Daniel Pollack, Martin Bleich, Charles J. Reid, Jr. & Mohammad H. Fadel, Classical Religious Perspectives of Adoption Law, 79 Notre Dame L. Rev. 693 (2004).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Augustinian Goods of Marriage: The Disappearing Cornerstone of the American Law of Marriage, 18 BYU J. Pub. L. 449 (2004).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Unavoidable Influence of Religion Upon the Law of Marriage, 23 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 493 (2004).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Gingerbread Man Thirty Years On: The Parlous State of Marital Theory, 1 U. St. Thomas L.J. 656 (2003).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Creativity of the Common-Law Judge: The Jurisprudence of William Mitchell, 30 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 213 (2003).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., “So It Will Be Found that the Right of Women in Many Cases is of Diminished Condition”: Rights and the Legal Equality of Men and Women in Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century Canon Law, 35 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 471 (2002).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., John T. Noonan, Jr., on the Catholic Conscience and War: Negre v. Larsen, 76 Notre Dame L. Rev. 881 (2001).
Charles J. Reid, Jr. & John Witte, Jr., In the Steps of Gratian: Writing the History of Canon Law in the 1990’s, 48 Emory L.J. 647 (1999).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Fundamental Freedom: Judge John T. Noonan, Jr.’s Historiography of Religious Liberty, 83 Marq. L. Rev. 367 (1999).
Bruce P. Frohnen & Charles J. Reid, Jr., Diversity in Western Constitutionalism: Chartered Rights, Federated Structure, and Natural-Law Reasoning in Burke’s Theory of Empire, 29 McGeorge L. Rev. 27 (1997).
Harold J. Berman & Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Transformation of English Legal Science: From Hale to Blackstone, 45 Emory L.J. 437 (1996).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Seventeenth-Century Revolution in the English Land Law, 43 Clev. St. L. Rev. 221 (1995).
Harold J. Berman & Charles J. Reid, Jr., Roman Law in Europe and the Jus Commune: A Historical Overview with Emphasis on the New Legal Science of the Sixteenth Century, 20 Syracuse J. Int’l L. & Com. 1 (1994).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Canonistic Contribution to the Western Rights Tradition: An Historical Inquiry, 33 B.C. L. Rev. 37 (1991).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., More Than a Mere Contract: Marriage as Contract and Covenant in Law and Theology, University of Chicago Web Forum, May, 2008.
Charles J. Reid, Jr. & Robert Delahunty, Christian Right Conspiracy, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, August, 2007 at 8-9.
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Elections, Royal and Ecclesistical, in 2 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 555 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Patria Potestas, in 3 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 1267 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Corpus luris Civilis, in 2 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 450 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Maxims, Legal, in 3 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 1106 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Panormitanus, in 3 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 1251 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Fideicommissum, in 2 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 622 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Bracton, Henry de, in 2 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 555 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Women, Legal Status of, in 4 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 1740 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Marriage, Law of, in 3 Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 1092 (Robert E. Bjork ed., Oxford U. Press 2010).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Procreation, in The Encyclopedia of Love in the World Religions (Yehudit Greenberg ed., ABC-CLIO 2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Incest, in The Encyclopedia of Love in the World Religions (Yehudit Greenberg ed., ABC-CLIO 2008).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Book Review, 53 J. Church & St. 132 (2011) (reviewing Tamara Metz, Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State and the Case for Their Divorce (2010)).
Charles J. Reid, Jr., Book Review, 24 J.L. & Religion 757 (2009) (reviewing Ramsay MacMullen, Voting About God in Early Church Councils (2006)).