Doctoral Student in History
About
Matthew Cerjak is an emerging historian of Anglo-American law whose research focuses on the institutional development and uses of the common law and equity in North America throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His work challenges narratives that privilege the common law as the singular foundation of American jurisprudence and instead shows how law and equity functioned as twin jurisdictions, albeit in different configurations depending on time and place. Moreover, by combining quantitative analysis with in depth archival research, he reconstructs the lives of the litigants, lawyers, and judges who shaped the history of our legal system.
Selected Publications:
"'She Has A Right': Unveiling Legal Knowledge and Action Through the Narratives of Formerly Enslaved Women," Women's Writing, Forthcoming.
"Teaching About Enslaved Women and the Law: The Freedom Suit of Elizabeth Key and Institution of Partus Sequitur Ventrem in Colonial Virginia," Social Education 88, no. 6 (November/December 2024): 386-390. https://www.socialstudies.org/social-education/88/6.
