Nathaniel Donahue

Nathaniel is a legal historian of the United States in the long 19th century. His research concerns the tradition of compulsory public service in American governance, and how the decline of the “conscription state,” particularly at the local level, changed how Americans understood citizenship, private law, and the administrative state.

He received his A.B., summa cum laude, in Social Studies from Harvard College. He then received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal as well as a legal history fellow and a Coker Fellow.

His scholarship received the Joseph Parker Prize for the best paper on legal history (twice), as well as the Judge William E. Miller Prize for the best paper on the Bill of Rights and the Quintin Johnston Prize in Real Property Law. His article with John Witt was published in the Cornell Law Review. His research has been supported by the Beinecke Library Research Fellowship, the Oscar M. Reubhausen Fund, and the Falk Fellowship Fund.

In his spare time, he likes to submit six-word stories to Wired Magazine’s Six-Word Story competition with his friends. Although they have only received an honorable mention so far, they hope to make it big some day.