Jeremy Kessler

A noted legal historian, Jeremy Kessler writes primarily about First Amendment law, administrative law, and constitutional law. His forthcoming book, Fortress of Liberty: The Rise and Fall of the Draft and the Remaking of American Law (Harvard University Press, 2021) explores how the contested development of the military draft transformed the relationship between civil liberties law and the American administrative state. 

Kessler’s past scholarship has investigated the origins of modern First Amendment law, the legal and political economic foundations of the administrative state, and transatlantic debates about the relationship between rights and governance throughout the 20th century. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Texas Law Review, among other publications. 

After joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 2015, Kessler participated in the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought’s Foucault 13/13 (2015 to 2016) and Uprising 13/13 (2017 to 2018) interdisciplinary seminar series. He moderated panels on Foucault’s seventh lecture series at the Collège de France as well as counterrevolution and insurgency.

Kessler is co-director of Columbia University’s 20th Century Politics and Society Workshop and Columbia Law School's Legal History Workshop. He also serves on the ABA’s Committee on the History of Administrative Law.

Earlier in his career, Kessler clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. His prior positions include the David Berg Foundation Fellowship at the Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization at NYU School of Law, a graduate fellowship at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and the Harry Middleton Fellowship in Presidential Studies at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.

During his time at Yale Law School, Kessler was a Legal History Fellow and the executive editor of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities.