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 wide coverage in the news and academia.[6][7][8][9] Neoconservative scholar Joshua Muravchik dismissed the book as mere reductio ad Hitlerum.[10]

In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AASS).[11]

• 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.[12] ISBN 978-0691172422
  • Synopsis: a historical analysis of the ways in which Nazi Germany was influenced by and modeled its policies after the United States during the 1930s. Whitman argues that the Nazis were particularly interested in the racial segregation and anti-miscegenation laws that were prevalent in many American states, as well as the brutal tactics used by American law enforcement to control minority populations. These policies served as a template for the Nazis' own persecution of Jews and other minority groups during the Holocaust. Whitman also explores the ways in which American eugenics theory influenced the Nazi regime's ideas about racial purity and the superiority of the Aryan race.
• Why the Nazis studied American race laws for inspiration. Aeon, 13 December 2016