Welcome
Tobias Barrington Wolff
Contact Information
tbwolff@ucdavis.edu
530-754-6981
Rm. 1114 King Hall
Education
- B.S. English (Renaissance Literature), Yale University 1992
- J.D., Yale University 1997
Professor of Law
"One of the responsibilities of those who work in the law is to learn to hear, and understand, unfamiliar voices. This is true for practicing attorneys, judges and scholars alike. An attorney must understand a client's interests on the client's own terms -- even when those interests are wholly unfamiliar -- and translate them into language that will be persuasive to a court. A judge must apply the law faithfully to the litigants who come before her, even when those litigants express their claims in terms that are foreign to her own experience. And a scholar must always maintain a willingness to test the foundations of his ideas against new insights from unexpected quarters.
Full Biography..."This responsibility calls for more than intellectual rigor, although it surely calls for that. It also calls for mature reflection, even about issues that provoke passionate responses. The late John Boswell -- one of the great scholars of the Twentieth Century -- once wrote of the study of History that 'Reconstructing the monuments of the past from the rubble of the present requires quiet concentration.' The same holds true when we seek to understand the stories of communities whose monuments in the law have yet to be built."
... CloseSpecial Interests
Civil Procedure (Including Civil Litigation And Complex Litigation), Conflict Of Laws, Constitutional Law, Sexual Orientation And The LawSelected Career Highlights
- Visiting Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School, fall 2005
- Visiting Professor of Law, Stanford Law School, 2003-04
- Litigation Associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York, 1998-2000
More Career Highlights...- Law Clerk for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1997-98
- Law Clerk for the Honorable William A. Norris (ret.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1997
Selected Publications
- Interest Analysis in Interjurisdictional Marriage Disputes, 53 University of Pennsylvania 2215 Law Review (2005)
- Preclusion in Class Action Litigation, 105 Columbia Law Review 717 (2005)
- The Pimple on Adonis's Nose: A Dialogue on the Concept of Merit in the Affirmative Action Debate, 56 Hastings Law Journal (forthcoming 2005)
- Political Representation and Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, 89 Iowa Law Review 1633 (2004)
More Publications...- The Thirteenth Amendment and Slavery in the Global Economy, 102 Columbia Law Review 973 (2002)
- Compelled Affirmations, Free Speech, and the U.S. Military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy, 63 Brooklyn Law Review 1141 (1997)
- Principled Silence, 106 Yale Law Journal 247 (1997) (Case Note, Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996))
- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Harms the Constitution, But So Does this Cure, Los Angeles Times op-ed
- Different Battle, Same Struggle, Los Angeles Times op-ed
- Gays in the Military: 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' 10 Years and 10,000 Discharges Later, San Francisco Chronicle op-ed (with Aaron Belkin)"
- Pentagon Should Take a Cue from Wal-Mart, San Jose Mercury News op-ed
- The Sniper Killings and the Calls for Execution, FindLaw.com
- What the Recent Pledge of Allegiance Decision Really Means, FindLaw.com
- Rights for Gay and Lesbian Couples, FindLaw.com
- Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Hits Home, FindLaw.com
- Why We Are Here, FindLaw.com
- Civil Procedure: Theory and Practice, Linda Silberman, Allan Stein & Tobias Wolff, Aspen, 2001 & Supp. 2004-05)
