Directory
Jeff Schmitt
Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs; Professor of Law
Full-Time Faculty
School of Law
Profile
Professor Schmitt's research explores issues of state power within our federal system. His has written extensively on Article IV of the Constitution, including the Property Clause, Full Faith and Credit Clause, and Fugitive Slave Clause.
Professor Schmitt joined the faculty at the University of Dayton School of Law in 2016 and was appointed Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs in January 2020. He clerked for Judge Susan H. Black of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Timothy J. Corrigan of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. He also worked as an associate at Jones Day in Cleveland, Ohio.
Professor Schmitt graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as an essays editor on the Virginia Law Review. He received his bachelor's degree from Miami University.
Courses Taught
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Procedure
Transactional Drafting and Race
Racism in American Law
Degrees
J.D., University of Virginia School of Law
B.A., Miami University
Areas of Law
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law
Legal History
Selected Publications
Slavery and the History of Congress’s Enumerated Powers, Arkansas Law Review, forthcoming (2021)
Limiting the Property Clause, 20 Nevada Law Journal 145 (2019)
Courts, Backlash, and Social Change: Learning from the History of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 123 Penn State Law Review (2018)
A Historical Reassessment of Congress’s “Power to Dispose of” the Public Lands, 42 Harvard Environmental Law Review 453 (2018)
In Defense of Shelby County’s Principle of Equal State Sovereignty, 68 Oklahoma Law Review 209 (2016)
Rethinking the State Sovereignty Interest in Personal Jurisdiction, 66 Case Western Reserve Law Review 769 (2016)
Making Sense of Extraterritoriality: Why California’s Progressive Global Warming and Animal Welfare Legislation does not Violate the Dormant Commerce Clause, 39 Harvard Environmental Law Review 423 (2015)
The Federal Right to Recover Fugitive Slaves: An Absolute but Self-Defeating Property Right, 2 Savannah Law Review 21 (2015) (invited contribution)
Constitutional Limitations on Extraterritorial State Power: State Regulation, Choice of Law, and Slavery, 83 Mississippi Law Journal 59 (2014)
Immigration Enforcement Reform: Learning from the History of Fugitive Slave Rendition, 103 Georgetown Law Journal Online 1 (2014)
A Historical Reassessment of Full Faith and Credit, 20 George Mason Law Review 485 (2013)
The Antislavery Judge Reconsidered, 29 Law & History Review 797 (2011) (peer-reviewed)
Note, Rethinking Ableman v. Booth and States’ Rights in Wisconsin, 93 Virginia Law Review 1315 (2007)