James Whitman

Whitman is the son of investor and philanthropist Martin J. Whitman.[2] He also has a sister, Tony Award-winning producer Barbara Whitman.[2][3]

He graduated from Yale University with a BA in 1980 and a JD in 1988, from Columbia University with a MA in 1982, and from the University of Chicago with a PhD in 1987. He was a Guggenheim Fellow.[4][5] In 2015, he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the KU Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven)

Whitman's 2017 book, Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, received critical acclaim.[6][7] Neoconservative scholar Joshua Muravchik dismissed the book as mere reductio ad Hitlerum.[8]

In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AASS).[9]

• The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War. Harvard University Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-674-06714-1.
• The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial. Yale University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-11600-7.
• Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-518260-6.
• "The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity versus Liberty", Yale Law Journal, Vol. 113, April 2004
• The Legacy of Roman Law in the German Romantic Era: Historical Vision and Legal Change, Princeton University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-691-05560-2
• Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton University Press, 2017.[10] ISBN 978-0691172422
• Why the Nazis studied American race laws for inspiration. Aeon, 13 December 2016