Walter F. Pratt, Jr.

Legal historian Walter F. “Jack” Pratt, Jr., is an associate dean and professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. Born September 17, 1946, in Jackson, Mississippi, Pratt earned his B.A. magna cum laude at Vanderbilt University in 1968, his D.Phil. as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University in 1974, and his J.D. from Yale in 1977, where he served as the articles and book review editor for the Yale Law Journal. After law school, he clerked for Judge Charles Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Jackson, Mississippi, and then for United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. He taught law at Duke University and Brigham Young University before joining the faculty of the Notre Dame Law School in 1986 as an associate professor of law. In 1998 he became a full professor at Notre Dame.

(Article first posted September 2002)