The J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History is a biennial event sponsored by the Institute for Legal Studies in conjunction with the American Society for Legal History (ASLH). Each Hurst Institute is organized and chaired by a well-known legal historian and includes visiting senior scholars who lead specialized sessions.

For each Institute, a committee appointed by the ASLH reviews applications from beginning faculty members, doctoral students with completed or almost completed dissertations, and recent J.D. graduates, and selects 12 junior scholars from around the world as Institute Fellows. (The person who serves as the Hurst program chair does not serve on the selection committee.) The Fellows come to Madison for two weeks to participate in seminars, meet other legal historians, and discuss their own work. The two-week program is structured but informal, and features discussions of core readings in legal history and analysis of the work of the participants in the Institute.

2017 Session
The 2017 Hurst Institute will take place June 4-17, 2017.

Application Information
The application deadline is December 1, 2016