B.A. summa cum laude, 1996, Pomona College M.Phil., 1997, University of Cambridge M.A., 2000, Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences M.Phil., 2001, Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences J.D., 2002, Yale Law School Ph.D., 2009, Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Professor Joshua Tate is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was Executive Editor of both the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law. During law school, he worked as a summer associate for Jenner & Block in Chicago and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and Moscow. Following a clerkship with the Hon. Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, he served as the Ribicoff Fellow at Yale Law School for 2003-04, and as a Golieb Fellow at NYU Law School for 2004-05. He has been a full-time faculty member at SMU Dedman School of Law since the fall of 2005, and has also been a visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He earned his Ph.D. in History from Yale in 2009.
Professor Tate’s research and teaching is concentrated in the areas of legal history, property, and wills and trusts. He has written articles on modern inheritance law and the legal history of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and nineteenth-century America, for such journals as the Journal of Legal History; Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities; Journal of Law and Religion; U.C. Davis Law Review; Real Property, Probate, and Trust Journal; and Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. He has given invited presentations at numerous academic conferences, colloquia, and workshops both in the United States and abroad. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas; the American Bar Association (Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section); the American Society for Legal History; the Selden Society; and the Society for Medieval Canon Law, among other professional organizations. He is currently engaged in a study of the development of property rights and remedies in medieval England, focusing on advowson litigation.
Competing Institutions and Dispute Settlement in Medieval England, in LAW AND DISPUTING IN THE MIDDLE AGES: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINTH CARLSBERG ACADEMY CONFERENCE ON MEDIEVAL LEGAL HISTORY 2012, at 235 (Per Andersen et al. eds., 2013).
The Third Lateran Council and the Ius Patronatus in England, in PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MEDIEVAL CANON LAW: ESZTERGOM, 3-8 AUGUST 2008, at 589 (Peter Erdö & Sz. Anzelm Szuromi eds., Monumenta Iuris Canonici, C:14, 2010).
Should Charitable Trust Enforcement Rights Be Assignable?, 85 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 1045 (2010) (symposium issue).
Immortal Fame: Publicity Rights, Taxation, and the Power of Testation, 44 GA. L. REV. 1 (2009) (lead article).
Inheritance Rights of Nonmarital Children in Late Roman Law, 4 ROMAN LEGAL TRADITION 1 (2008) (lead article).
Codification of Late Roman Inheritance Law: Fideicommissa and the Theodosian Code, 76 LEGAL HIST. REV. (TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR RECHTSGESCHIEDENIS) 237 (2008).
Caregiving and the Case for Testamentary Freedom, 42 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 129 (2008).
Christianity and the Legal Status of Abandoned Children in the Later Roman Empire, 24 J.L. & RELIGION 123 (2008).
Gambling, Commodity Speculation, and the "Victorian Compromise," 19 YALE J.L. & HUMAN. 97 (2007).
Ownership and Possession in the Early Common Law, 48 AM. J. LEGAL HIST. 280 (2006), reprinted in RELATIONS BETWEEN THE IUS COMMUNE AND ENGLISH LAW 129 (Richard H. Helmholz & Vito Piergiovanni eds., 2009).
Conditional Love: Incentive Trusts and the Inflexibility Problem, 41 REAL PROP., PROB. & TR. J. 445 (2006) (lead article), cited in RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TRUSTS § 82 cmt. e reporter's note (2007).
Perpetual Trusts and the Settlor’s Intent, 53 U. KAN. L. REV. 595 (2005); substantially republished as Perpetuities and Trust Law Reform in the United States, 2005 TRUSTS E ATTIVITÀ FIDUCIARIE 504 (Part I), and 2006 TRUSTS E ATTIVITÀ FIDUCIARIE 59 (Part II).
New Thoughts on the “Will of Dasumius,” 122 ZEITSCHRIFT DER SAVIGNY-STIFTUNG FÜR RECHTSGESCHICHTE, ROMANISTISCHE ABTEILUNG 166 (2005).
The Origins of Quare Impedit, 25 J. LEGAL HIST. 203 (2004) (lead article).
Roman and Visigothic Procedural Law in the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, 90 ZEITSCHRIFT DER SAVIGNY-STIFTUNG FÜR RECHTSGESCHICHTE, KANONISTISCHE ABTEILUNG 510 (2004).
PROPERTY, PATRONAGE, AND THE BIRTH OF THE COMMON LAW (Yale University Press, under contract).
A TEXAS COMPANION FOR THE COURSE IN WILLS, TRUSTS, AND ESTATES (Aspen Publishers, 2011).
"Competing Institutions and Dispute Settlement in Medieval England," Ninth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2012; U.K. IVR Annual Conference, London, England, April 2013. "Property, Patronage, and the Birth of the Common Law" (and previous titles), Yale Law School, Legal History Forum, March 2004; New York University School of Law, Legal History Colloquium, September 2004; Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History, Tempe, Arizona, October 2007; Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Montreal, Canada, May 2008; Property Works-in-Progress Conference, Boulder, Colorado, June 2008; Dallas Bar Association, Legal History Discussion Group, December 2008; SMU Medieval Studies Reading Group, April 2009; SMU Board of Trustees, Committee on Academic Policy, Planning, and Management, February 2010; Eighty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, New Haven, Connecticut, March 2010; SMU Dedman School of Law, Executive Board Meeting, April 2010; Forty-Fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2010; SMU Law School Faculty Forum, January 2013; Renmin Law School, Beijing, China, March 2013.
"The Third Lateran Council and the Ius Patronatus in England," Eighteenth British Legal History Conference, Oxford, England, July 2007; Thirteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary, August 2008; Twenty-Eighth International Conference of the Charles Homer Haskins Society, Boston, Massachusetts, November 2009.
“Should Charitable Trust Enforcement Rights Be Assignable?,” Symposium on the Law of Philanthropy in the Twenty-First Century (sponsored by the ACTEC Foundation and the Chicago-Kent Law Review), Chicago, Illinois, October 2009.
"Advowson Litigation in Medieval England: A Quantitative Approach," Nineteenth British Legal History Conference, Exeter, England, July 2009.
"Basic Planning for Incapacity: Issues and Options," Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program and Dallas Association of Young Lawyers Elder Law Committee, April 2009.
"Caregiving and the Case for Testamentary Freedom" (and previous titles), Property Works-in-Progress Conference, Boulder, Colorado, June 2007; Gloucester Summer Legal Conference, Gloucester, England, July 2007; Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Berlin, Germany, July 2007; Texas Junior Legal Scholars Conference, Fort Worth, Texas, August 2007; University of Pennsylvania Law School Ad Hoc Workshop, February 2008; University of Miami Law School Faculty Workshop, March 2008; Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Berkeley, California, March 2008; SMU Law School Faculty Forum, September 2008.
"Recent Developments in Trust and Estate Law and Taxation" (with Hank Lischer), Dallas Bar Association, Probate, Trusts, and Estates Section Meeting, November 2007.
"The Legal Status of Abandoned Children in the Later Roman Empire," Law and Literature International Colloquium, Swansea, Wales, July 2007.
“Current Issues in Estate Planning: Dynasty Trusts and Incentive Trusts,” CLE Presentation, SMU Law School Alumni Weekend, April 2007.
"Ownership and Possession in the Early Common Law: The Advowson Writs," Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 2005; American-Italian Seminar on Relations Between the Ius Commune and English Law, Genoa, Italy, September 2006.
“Roman and Visigothic Procedural Law in the False Decretals of Isidorus Mercator,” Eleventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Catania, Sicily, August 2000.
William Blackstone, in 1 OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN POLITICAL AND LEGAL HISTORY 77 (Donald T. Critchlow & Philip R. VanderMeer eds., 2012).
Regis W. Campfield: Colleague, Mentor, and Friend, 63 SMU L. REV. 13 (2010).
Celebrity, Death, and Taxes: Michael Jackson’s Estate, 125 TAX NOTES 345 (2009) (with Bridget J. Crawford, Mitchell M. Gans & Jonathan G. Blattmachr).
Marilyn Monroe's Legacy: Taxation of Postmortem Publicity Rights, 118 YALE L.J. POCKET PART 38 (2008).
Gambling and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South: Evidence from Nacogdoches County, Texas, 1838-39, 15 J. S. LEGAL HIST. 131 (2007).
Translation of Stemma Bulgaricum (with Anders Winroth), in LAW AND LEARNING IN THE MIDDLE AGES 56 (Helle Vogt & Mia Münster-Swendsen eds., 2006). Review of KARL SHOEMAKER, SANCTUARY AND CRIME IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 400-1500, in 8 LAW CULTURE & HUMAN. 517 (2012).
Review of PAOLO GROSSI, A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN LAW, in 29 LAW & HIST. REV. 899 (2011).
Review of R.B. OUTHWAITE, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS, 1500-1860, in 95 ZEITSCHRIFT DER SAVIGNY-STIFTUNG FÜR RECHTSGESCHICHTE, KANONISTISCHE ABTEILUNG 666 (2009).
Review of JOSEPH BIANCALANA, THE FEE TAIL AND THE COMMON RECOVERY IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND 1176-1502, in 23 LAW & HIST. REV. 205 (2005).
Review of ROBERT C. PALMER, SELLING THE CHURCH: THE ENGLISH PARISH IN LAW, COMMERCE, AND RELIGION, 1350-1550, in 46 AM. J. LEGAL HIST. 506 (2004).
Review of RICHARD FENTIMAN, FOREIGN LAW IN ENGLISH COURTS: PLEADING, PROOF AND CHOICE OF LAW, in 24 YALE J. INT’L L. 617 (1999).
Case Note, Game Over, 109 YALE L.J. 1709 (2000).