John Fabian Witt is the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia University, where he teaches and writes about the history of law in America. He is a recognized authority on the history of tort law and the author of two books: Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law (Harvard University Press, 2007), which tells the little-known stories of key moments in American legal history, and The Accidental Republic (Harvard University Press, 2004), which is the story of American tort and accident law at the turn of the twentieth century. He is currently working on a book about the history of the law of war in the United States. Professor Witt's articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, as well as The New York Times, Slate, and The Washington Post. He received his B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. in history from Yale University.