Sam Erman

Sam Erman joined USC Gould School of Law as an Assistant Professor of Law from the Smithsonian Institution where he served as a Latino studies postdoctoral fellow.

Erman’s primary areas of research include the history of Puerto Rico and its relations with the United States. His dissertation, Puerto Rico and the Constitution: Struggles around Status and Governance in a New Empire, 1898-1925 examines closely the United States’ promise of citizenship to Puerto Rico.

In 2012 Erman served as a visiting professor of criminal law at Peking University School of Transactional Law. He also worked as a graduate student instructor in the University of Michigan’s program in American culture. He co-designed and assisted in teaching an undergraduate seminar on The Boundaries of Citizenship: From Dred Scott to Plessy for the University of Michigan’s History Department.

Prior to his fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Erman was a Raoul-Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellow at Harvard Law School. He clerked for Judge John Paul Stevens and Judge Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Merrick B. Garland of the United States Court of Appeals.

He received his JD from the University of Michigan Law School, summa cum laude, and his PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan. He completed his AB in English at Harvard College, cum laude.

Works in Progress

• Puerto Rico and the Constitution: Struggles Around Status and Governance in the New Empire, 1891-1925 (In-progress book manuscript revised and expanded from Puerto Rico and the Promise of United States Citizenship: Struggles Around Status in a New Empire, 1898-1917 (2010) (Ph.D. dissertation)).

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Reconstruction and Empire: Legacies of the U.S. Civil War and Puerto Rican Struggles for Home Rule, 1898-1917," (Under consideration by Law and History Review). - (SSRN)
• “Citizens of Empire: Puerto Rico, Status, and Constitutional Change,” 102 California Law Review 1181 (October 2014). - (SSRN)
• "Affirmative Meritocracy," 7 Social Issues and Policy Review (with Walton, G., and Spencer, S.) (forthcoming 2013).
• "Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire: Puerto Rico, Isabel Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court, 1898-1905," 27 Journal of American Ethnic History 5 (2008) (Received the Carlton C. Qualey Memorial Article Award: The best article published in the Journal of American Ethnic History during the past two years). - (www)
• "An 'Unintended Consequence': Dred Scott Reinterpreted," 106 Michigan Law Review 1157 (2008) (reviewing Austin Allen, Origins of the Dred Scott Case (2006)). - (Hein)
• Note, "Word Games: Raising and Resolving the Shortcomings in Accident-Insurance Doctrine that Autoerotic-Asphyxiation Cases Reveal," 103 Michigan Law Review 2172 (2005). - (Hein)

Other Works

• Citizens of Empire: Federico Degetau, Puerto Rican Status, and the U.S. Order, 1898-1905 (manuscript).

Dissertation

• Puerto Rico and the Promise of United States Citizenship: Struggles Around Status in a New Empire, 1898-1917 (Ph.D. dissertation). - (www)

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Newsday
September 24, 2018
Re: Abby K. Wood

Newsday quoted Abby Wood on PAC recipients, saying that "“PAC money is an incumbent game,” and adding that the "top 50 PAC money recipients in the House of Representatives all were incumbents and 76 percent were Republicans."

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
July, 2018

"The Certification Paradox", The Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law, Vol. 2.

Michael Simkovic
July, 2018

"Luck or Skill? Mutual Funds that Borrow," International Conference on Economic Modeling 2018, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Thomas D. Lyon
June, 2018

"The Productivity of Wh- Prompts in Child Forensic Interviews" (with Elizabeth C. Ahern, Samantha J. Andrews & Stacia N. Stolzenberg), Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33 (2018): 2007.