Richard H. Helmholz

Richard H. Helmholz is the Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1965 and also earned an A.B. in French literature at Princeton University, and a Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of California at Berkeley. He has a reputation as a tough grader and many times gives classes the lowest statistical mean grade a law school will allow.

During his career, Professor Helmholz has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize. In the academic year 2000-01, he served as Arthur Goodhart Professor of Law in Cambridge University, where he was also elected to a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, a Member of the American Law Institute, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He is also a member of the Selden Society Council. [ [http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/selden_society/about.html About the Selden Society ] ] Before moving to the University of Chicago, he spent ten years at Washington University in Saint Louis, where he was a Professor of Law and History.

His teaching interests are rooted primarily in the law of Property and in various aspects of natural resources law. Professor Helmholz's scholarship is heavily focused on a legal history, and one of his unique contributions to that field has been to demonstrate the relevance of the Roman and canon laws to the development of the common law. His scholarship was cited by Justice David Souter's majority opinion in the 2004 Supreme Court case "Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain et al.", 542 U.S. 692. [ http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-339.pdf See footnote 15 ]

During the academic year 2007-2008, he was a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He taught Property, European Legal History, and the Law of Oil and Gas. Professor Helmholz recently spent the Fall 2005 semester as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and is a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. He is known for his dry wit and love of pie.Fact|date=June 2008

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External links

* [http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/helmholz R.H. Helmholz]