Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: English Legal History, Criminal Law, Medieval England, Felony, Law and Emotions, Medieval Law

About Me: Elizabeth Papp Kamali is an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches criminal law and English legal history. Professor Kamali’s research focuses on the medieval English common law and the history of criminal law, with a particular interest in the early criminal trial jury. Her current projects include studies of the role of criminal intent in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English felony cases, medieval understandings of anger’s operation in felony adjudication, and the transition from trial by ordeal to trial by jury.

Professor Kamali completed her PhD in History at the University of Michigan, with a dissertation titled A Felonious State of Mind: Mens Rea in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England. In 2013, she was awarded the Kathryn T. Preyer Award for best paper by an early career scholar by the American Society for Legal History, as well as the Medieval Academy of America Graduate Student Prize for best graduate student paper. Professor Kamali received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Between college and law school, she worked at Orion Consultants, where she advised Wall Street broker/dealers on their relationships with institutional investors, and volunteered as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children in foster care.

Recent Publications: “Trial by Ordeal by Jury in Medieval England, or Saints and Sinners in Literature and Law.” In Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of William Ian Miller, edited by Kate Gilbert and Stephen D. White. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

“A Crossroads in Criminal Procedure: The Assumptions Underlying England’s Adoption of Trial by Jury for Crime” (coauthored with Thomas A. Green). In Law and Society in Later Medieval England and Ireland: Essays in Honour of Paul Brand, edited by Travis Baker, 51-81. New York: Routledge, 2018.

“The Devil’s Daughter of Hell Fire: Anger’s Role in Medieval English Felony Cases.” Law and History Review 35:1 (2017): 155-200.

“Law and Equity in a Medieval English Manor Court.” In Texts and Contexts in Legal History: Essays in Honor of Charles Donahue, edited by John Witte, Jr., Sara McDougall, and Anna di Robilant, 257-275. Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2016.