James W. ely Jr. is a renowned legal historian and property rights expert whose career accomplishments were recognized with both the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and the Owner's Counsel of American's Crystal Eagle Award in 2006. He is the author of several books that have received widespread critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians, including The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights; The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910; The Fuller Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy; Railroads and American Law; and A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court, for which he received the Tennessee History Book Award in 2002. Ely is a co-author of American Legal History: Cases and Materials. He also served as an editor of the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, the second edition of the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court Decisions, and The Bill of Rights in Modern America. He is currently Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law emeritus, Professor of History emeritus, and lecturer in law at Vanderbilt University. Since Professor Ely joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1972, he has been frequently recognized by students as one of the law school's outstanding teachers.
