FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall E114
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

gcasper@stanford.edu
(650) 723-2482 (voice)
(650) 725-9520 (fax)

Expertise
constitutional law; constitutional history; comparative law; jurisprudence

Languages
English, German

Gerhard Casper is president emeritus of Stanford University. He is the Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education at Stanford; a professor of law; a professor of political science, by courtesy; and a senior fellow at FSI. He has written and taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence. From 1977 to 1991, he was an editor of The Supreme Court Review.

Casper was the president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000. Before coming to Stanford, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School (starting in 1966), served as dean of the law school from 1979 to 1987, and served as provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. From 1964 to 1966, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include a monograph on legal realism, an empirical study of the workload of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the book Separating Power, about practices concerning the separation of powers at the end of the 18th century in the United States.

He has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute (1977), the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1980), the Order pour le mérite for the Sciences and Arts (1993), and the American Philosophical Society (1996).

Born in Germany in 1937, he studied law at the universities of Freiburg and

Hamburg; in 1961, he earned his first law degree. He attended Yale Law School, obtaining his Master of Laws degree in 1962, and then returned to Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1964. He emigrated to the United States in 1964.