Legal Knowledge is a podcast about the history of American legal education, told through a close look at the 200-year history of the University of Virginia School of Law. In season one, host Meggan Cashwell and a group of scholars discuss the UVA Law School's first hundred years, from Thomas Jefferson's founding vision in 1819 to coeducation in 1920. In season two, co-hosts Randi Flaherty and Loren Moulds explore transformative episodes in legal education at UVA from the turn of the twentieth century to the present.
Legal Knowledge is a production of the Arthur J. Morris Law Library at the University of Virginia. This podcast is based on the library's recently published book, "Legal Education at the University of Virginia: Tradition and Transformation" (UVA Press, 2025).
A New Curriculum for a New Era: The Law School at a Crossroads, 1970-1997
In this episode, Meggan Cashwell and Addison Patrick discuss their coauthored chapter on curricular reform from the 1970s through the 1990s, just as the Law School was establishing its new home on UVA's North Grounds. The conversation also goes behind the scenes of creating the book Legal Education at the University of Virginia, as Cashwell reflects on working with a wide range of contributors and as both authors discuss the archival sources that shaped the project—and surprised them. Cashwell and Patrick talk candidly about how these sources and stories ultimately inspired them to create the Legal Knowledge podcast.
22 Apr 2026
We Demand: Student Advocates for Curricular Change, 1960-1980
Professor Claudrena Harold joins cohost Loren Moulds to discuss law student activism in the 1960s and 70s as an engine of institutional change, particularly around faculty hiring and curricular expansion. She illuminates the university in this period as a coming together of students transformed—at different times and in different ways—by the political and social movements of the day. Law students asked how legal education could and should prepare them to meet this new moment. Harold uses the examples of the Black Law Students Association and the Virginia Law Women, both founded at UVA in the early 1970s, to highlight the central role that student advocacy played in building the curricular infrastructure of the modern UVA Law School.
9 Apr 2026
Gregory H. Swanson and the Integration of UVA Law
In this episode, former Law School dean Risa Goluboff and alumna Biruktawit Assefa join coauthor (and co-host) Randi Flaherty to discuss how attorney Gregory H. Swanson became the first Black student to integrate the University of Virginia and the UVA School of Law in 1950. In addition to sharing the story of Swanson's time at UVA, these authors explore what was happening in the field of legal education and in desegregation efforts related to higher education at the time of Swanson's ultimately successful bid to enroll as a graduate student at UVA Law.
18 Feb 2026
Becoming a National Law School, 1920-1960
In this episode, UVA Law Professor G. Edward White takes listeners back to 1972 when he first arrived in Charlottesville to teach law. White situates his personal experiences as a former clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren and as an early scholar in legal history within the broader transformation of American legal education in the mid-twentieth century. As a member of the faculty for over fifty years, White provides an eyewitness account of the Law School's development from a predominantly southern law school to a national one.
4 Feb 2026
Constitutional Law at UVA, 1902-1971
Welcome back to season two of Legal Knowledge! In this episode, UVA Law alumna Catherine Ward and professor emeritus A. E. Dick Howard join us for a behind-the-scenes look at twentieth-century constitutional change on the state level in Virginia, and they set the stage for this transformative period in legal education.
3 May 2023
Professionalization and Coeducation at UVA Law
In 1920, the first three women were admitted to the University of Virginia School of Law: Rose May Davis, Catherine Lipop, and Elizabeth Tompkins. Professor Anne Coughlin explores the lived realities of these women, from the small, familiar anxieties about grades and tuition costs, to the bold steps they took to combat gendered notions of inferiority during the early 20th century.
26 Apr 2023
The Legal Knowledge of Women in the 19th Century
Although women were not admitted to UVA Law as students until 1920, their presence on Grounds helped shape the legal curriculum of the 19th century. Professor Laura Edwards discusses the Black and white women who lived and labored at UVA, and the ways in which they navigated the repressive limitations on their legal power.
19 Apr 2023
The Civil War and Reconstruction
During the Civil War and Reconstruction, UVA Law professors promoted Southern nationalism and defended slavery in and outside the classroom. Professor Liz Varon discusses the role of UVA Law in advancing Lost Cause ideology through its curriculum.
12 Apr 2023
The Teachings and Legacy of John Barbee Minor
Professor John Barbee Minor led the Law School from 1845 to his death in 1895. Dr. Randi Flaherty discusses Minor's role in not only expanding the law curriculum and UVA Law's regional prominence, but also in promulgating a curriculum that justified slavery and white supremacy.
5 Apr 2023
Teaching the Laws of Slavery
Slavery was always a part of Thomas Jefferson's vision for the University of Virginia. Professor Justene Hill Edwards discusses the lived experience of slavery on Grounds as well as the intersections of slavery and legal pedagogy at UVA Law.
29 Mar 2023
The Jeffersonian Vision for Legal Education
At its founding in 1819, Thomas Jefferson wanted UVA Law to prepare leaders and lawyers to serve the new nation, but students desired more practical legal training. Professor David Konig joins us to describe the shifting landscape of early nineteenth-century legal education.
22 Mar 2023
Legal Knowledge Podcast Trailer
Host Meggan Cashwell introduces Legal Knowledge, a podcast that chronicles the history of the Law School at the University of Virginia (UVA).
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