Judith Kelleher Schafer

A native of New Orleans, she earned her bachelor's degree from H. Sophie Newcomb College.^[1] She graduated from Tulane with a master's in history,^[1] and then completed her Ph.D. there in 1985, after her two children were grown and gone.^[2] Her dissertation was The Long Arm of the Law: Slavery and the Supreme Court in Antebellum Louisiana, 1809–1862.^[3] She eventually taught at Tulane University's history department, interdisciplinary studies institute, and law school.^[4] Her first book, on slavery-related cases brought to the Louisiana Supreme Court in the antebellum era, won the Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association.^[2] She was awarded the Garnie McGinty Distinguished Career Award by the Louisiana Historical Association in 2004,^[5] and eventually became president of the Association.^[1] She won the Gulf Coast Historical Association's Book Prize for 2011.^[1] Schafer reported that the Louisiana Supreme Court was unique amongst the states: "One of the hardest things that Gov. Claiborne, the first governor, found was getting somebody qualified that would know Spanish, French and American law and to sort it all out."^[6] Hurricane Katrina threatened the archival materials she used for her research but luckily "the library had been built as a bomb shelter during the cold war, and it didn't flood."^[7] Schafer died in 2014 and was buried at Metairie Cemetery.^[2] She was remembered as a "prolific, thorough, and imaginative scholar, with a keen eye for the telling detail and a fine way with words."^[8]

• Schafer, Judith Kelleher (1994). Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780807118450. OCLC 30075362.
• Schafer, Judith Kelleher (2003). Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780807128626. OCLC 51297235.
• Schafer, Judith Kelleher (2009). Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780807133972. OCLC 237048367.
• Schafer, Judith Kelleher (February 1981). "New Orleans Slavery in 1850 as Seen in Advertisements". The Journal of Southern History. 47 (1): 33–56. doi:10.2307/2207055. JSTOR 2207055.
• "The Long Arm of the Law: Slave Criminals and the Supreme Court in Antebellum Louisiana (Tul. L. Rev. 1247)". Tulane Law Review. 60 (6). 1986.
• Schafer, Judith (June 1, 1993). "Sexual Cruelty to Slaves: The Unreported Case of Humphreys v. Utz - Symposium on the Law of Slavery: Criminal and Civil Law of Slavery". Chicago-Kent Law Review. 68 (3): 1313. ISSN 0009-3599.