Doctoral Student in History
About
Matthew Cerjak is an emerging historian of Anglo-American law whose research focuses on the institutional development 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. By combining large-scale quantitative analysis with local archival research, his work also reconstructs the lives of the lawyers, litigants, and judges who shaped the history of our legal system.
Selected Fellowships:
| 2026 |
Lapidus Fellowship for the Study of Rare |
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Early American Legal Texts |
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Omohundro Institute and William & Mary Law School |
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| 2025 |
Fellowship in Race, Law, & History |
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University of Michigan Law School |
Selected Publications:
“"She Has a Right": Unveiling Legal Knowledge and Action Through the Narratives of Formerly Enslaved Women.” Women’s Writing 33, no. 3 (2026): 1-21.
"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 (2024): 386-390.
