Jason Bates

Jason Bates is a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School as well as a Ph.D. candidate in history at Vanderbilt University. Previously, he worked as an Instructor in Law at Vanderbilt University School of Law as well as a litigator at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City. Jason is at work on his dissertation, “Reconfiguring Citizenship and Growing the State: Anti-Narcotics Law and Race in the United States, 1870-1930,” which explores the relationship between and among state power, civil liberties, race, and narcotics law in the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century. He is also the author of “Consolidating Support for a Law ‘Incapable of Enforcement:’ Segregation on Tennessee Streetcars," forthcoming in February 2016 in The Journal of Southern History. His research has been supported by awards from the American Society for Legal History, Vanderbilt’s Department of History, and Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science. He works with Professors Sarah Igo, Gary Gerstle, and Dan Sharfstein. He may be reached at: jbates@law.harvard.edu.