Victoria Nourse
Professor of Law
B.A., Stanford; J.D., University of California, Berkeley
Professor Nourse came to Georgetown after holding chairs at Emory University and the University of Wisconsin. She has been a visiting professor at Yale, NYU,...
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Professor Nourse came to Georgetown after holding chairs at Emory University and the University of Wisconsin. She has been a visiting professor at Yale, NYU, and the University of Maryland law schools. Her most recent book, In Reckless Hands (Norton 2008), tells the real life drama of the 1942 Supreme Court case striking down state eugenics laws, a case announcing a right to marry and procreate. Professor Nourse has published widely on constitutional history, the separation of powers, legislation, and the criminal law. Her latest article on Congress, “A Decision Theory of Statutory Interpretation” will appear in Fall 2012 in the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Nourse began her career in New York, clerking for Judge Edward Weinfeld and practicing at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. She left private practice to serve as junior counsel to the Senate-Iran Contra Committee under Senators Rudman and Inouye. From there, she moved down Pennsylvania Avenue to argue appeals for the Department of Justice in the Reagan-Bush years. She concluded her career in practice as senior advisor to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and now-Vice President Biden, on a variety of legislative matters, including the Violence Against Women Act. The story of her role in that fight is told in the 2009 book by Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (Norton). Professor Nourse is Director of the law schools’ first Center on Congressional Studies.
Recent Scholarship
Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals
- Victoria F. Nourse, A Decision Theory of Statutory Interpretation: Legislative History by the Rules, 122 Yale L.J. 70-152 (2012). [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Misunderstanding Congress: Statutory Interpretation, the Supermajoritarian Difficulty, and the Separation of Powers, 99 Geo. L.J. 1119-1177 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Two Kinds of Plain Meaning, 76 Brook. L. Rev. 997-1005 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Buck v. Bell: A Constitutional Tragedy from a Lost World, 39 Pepp. L. Rev. 101-117 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
Book Chapters and Collected Works
- Victoria F. Nourse, The Accidental Feminist, in Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory 339-351 (Martha Albertson Fineman ed., New York: Routledge 2011). [BOOK]
All Scholarship 2000 - Present
Books
- Victoria F. Nourse, In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near Triumph of American Eugenics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2008). [BOOK]
Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals
- Victoria F. Nourse, A Decision Theory of Statutory Interpretation: Legislative History by the Rules, 122 Yale L.J. 70-152 (2012). [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Misunderstanding Congress: Statutory Interpretation, the Supermajoritarian Difficulty, and the Separation of Powers, 99 Geo. L.J. 1119-1177 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Two Kinds of Plain Meaning, 76 Brook. L. Rev. 997-1005 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Buck v. Bell: A Constitutional Tragedy from a Lost World, 39 Pepp. L. Rev. 101-117 (2011). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse & Sarah A. Maguire, The Lost History of Governance and Equal Protection, 58 Duke L.J. 955-1012 (2009). [HEIN] [L] [W] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse & Greg Shaffer, Varieties of New Legal Realism: Can a New World Order Prompt a New Legal Theory?, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 61-137 (2009). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, A Tale of Two Lochners: The Untold History of Substantive Due Process and the Idea of Fundamental Rights, 97 Cal. L. Rev. 751-799 (2009). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law] [WWW]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Equality's Future: An Introduction, 23 Wis. J.L. Gender & Soc'y 161-167 (2008). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Howard Erlanger, Bryant Garth, Jane Larson, Elizabeth Mertz, & David Wilkins, Foreward, Is It Time for a New Legal Realism?, 2005 Wis. L. Rev. 335-363. [HEIN] [L] [W]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Rethinking Crime Legislation: History and Harshness, 39 Tulsa L. Rev. 925-939 (2004). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Toward a New Constitutional Anatomy, 56 Stan. L. Rev. 835-900 (2004). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Upending Status: A Comment on Switching, Inequality, and the Idea of the Reasonable Person, 2 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 361-375 (2004) (reviewing Cynthia Lee, Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom (2003)). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Reconceptualizing Criminal Law Defenses, 151 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1691-1746 (2003). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Law's Constitution: A Relational Critique, 17 Wis. Women's L.J. 23-56 (2002). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse & Jane S. Schacter, The Politics of Legislative Drafting: A Congressional Case Study, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 575-624 (2002). [HEIN] [L] [W]
- Victoria F. Nourse, Self-Defense and Subjectivity, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1235-1308 (2001). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
- Victoria F. Nourse, The "Normal" Successes and Failures of Feminism and the Criminal Law, 75 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 951-978 (2000). [HEIN] [L] [W] [SSRN] [Gtown Law]
Book Chapters and Collected Works
- Victoria F. Nourse, The Accidental Feminist, in Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory 339-351 (Martha Albertson Fineman ed., New York: Routledge 2011). [BOOK]
Selected Contributions to Other Publications
View all scholarship
