Joshua C. Tate

Headshot of Joshua C. Tate, faculty member at SMU Dedman School of Law.

Professor of Law

Full-time faculty

Email

jctate@smu.edu

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Joshua Tate's research and teaching focus on legal history, property, and trusts and estates. He has been a full-time faculty member at SMU Dedman School of Law since the fall of 2005, and was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the spring of 2008. In the fall of 2012, he was a Lloyd M. Robbins Senior Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, serves the Selden Society as a member of the Council and as the Honorary Treasurer for the U.S.A., and is a past chair of the Uniform Acts Committee for the ABA Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section and the Sutherland Prize Committee for the American Society for Legal History.

Professor Tate has given invited presentations at numerous academic conferences, colloquia, and workshops both in the United States and abroad. From 2013 to 2015, he gave a series of more than sixty lectures in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. He recently published a monograph with Yale University Press on the development of property rights and remedies in medieval England, focusing on issues of jurisdictional conflict with regard to rights of presentation to churches. He is admitted to practice in Texas and Connecticut.

Area of expertise

  • Legal History
  • Trusts and Estates
  • Property Law

Education

B.A., summa cum laude, Pomona College
M.Phil., University of Cambridge
J.D., Yale Law School
Ph.D., Yale University

Courses

Trusts & Estates
Property
History of Anglo-American Legal Institutions

Books

(Yale University Press 2022)

(Routledge 2018) (ed. with José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes and Andrés Botero-Bernal)

A TEXAS COMPANION FOR THE COURSE IN WILLS, TRUSTS, AND ESTATES (Aspen Publishers, biennial editions 2011-present)

Articles

Magna Carta and the Definition of Fundamental Rights, 59 Tulsa Law Review 39 (2024)

Personal Reality: Delusion in Law and Science, 49 Connecticut Law Review 893 (2017)
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La Carta Magna y los orígenes del procedimiento judicial o legal, 6 Precedente 145 (Jan.-June 2015) (in Spanish)

Perpetuities and the Genius of a Free State, 67 Vanderbilt Law Review 1823 (2014)
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Should Charitable Trust Enforcement Rights Be Assignable?, 85 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1045 (2010)
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Immortal Fame: Publicity Rights, Taxation, and the Power of Testation, 44 Georgia Law Review 1 (2009)
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Celebrity, Death, and Taxes: Michael Jackson’s Estate, 125 Tax Notes 345 (2009) (with Bridget J. Crawford, Mitchell M. Gans & Jonathan G. Blattmachr)
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Caregiving and the Case for Testamentary Freedom, 42 U.C. Davis Law Review 129 (2008)
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Marilyn Monroe’s Legacy: Taxation of Postmortem Publicity Rights, 118 Yale Law Journal Pocket Part 38 (2008)
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Inheritance Rights of Nonmarital Children in Late Roman Law, 4 Roman Legal Tradition 1 (2008)
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Codification of Late Roman Inheritance Law: Fideicommissa and the Theodosian Code, 76 Legal History Review (Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis) 237 (2008)
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Christianity and the Legal Status of Abandoned Children in the Later Roman Empire, 24 Journal of Law & Religion 123 (2008)
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Gambling, Commodity Speculation, and the “Victorian Compromise,” 19 Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 97 (2007)
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Gambling and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South: Evidence from Nacogdoches County, Texas, 1838-1839, 15 Journal of Southern Legal History 131 (2007)

Conditional Love: Incentive Trusts and the Inflexibility Problem, 41 Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal 445 (2006)
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Perpetual Trusts and the Settlor’s Intent, 53 U. Kan. L. Rev. 595 (2005)
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Ownership and Possession in the Early Common Law, 48 American Journal of Legal History 280 (2006)
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New Thoughts on the “Will of Dasumius,” 122 Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 166 (2005)

The Origins of Quare Impedit, 25 Journal of Legal History 203 (2004)

Roman and Visigothic Procedural Law in the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, 90 Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 510 (2004)

Book chapters

Justice, in A CULTURAL HISTORY OF LAW IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE 11 (Emanuele Conte & Laurent Mayali eds., 2019)

Royal Privilege and Episcopal Rights in the Later Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Ashbourne Advowson, 1270-1289, in LAW AND SOCIETY IN LATER MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND IRELAND: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PAUL BRAND 97 (Travis R. Baker ed., 2017)

Glanvill and the Development of the English Advowson Writs, in TEXTS AND CONTEXT IN LEGAL HISTORY: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF CHARLES DONAHUE 129 (Sara McDougall, Anna di Robilant & John Witte, Jr., eds. 2016)

Magna Carta and the Fundamental Right to Due Process, in MAGNA CARTA: 800 ANOS DE INFLUÊNCIA NO CONSTITUCIONALISMO E NOS DIREITOS FUNDAMENTAIS (Zulmar Fachin, Jairo Néia Lima & Éverton Willian Pona eds. 2015), reprinted in 11 Frontiers of Law in China 236 (2016)

, in STUDIES IN CANON LAW AND COMMON LAW IN HONOR OF R.H. HELMHOLZ  15 (Troy L. Harris ed. 2015)

, in LAW AND DISPUTING IN THE MIDDLE AGES: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINTH CARLSBERG ACADEMY CONFERENCE ON MEDIEVAL LEGAL HISTORY 2012, 235 (Per Andersen et al. eds. 2013)

William Blackstone, in 1 OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN POLITICAL AND LEGAL HISTORY 77 (Donald T. Critchlow & Philip R. VanderMeer eds. 2012)

Other publications

Review of NICHOLAS VINCENT, MAGNA CARTA: ORIGINS AND LEGACY, 33 Medieval Perspectives (2018)

Review of SUSANNA L. BLUMENTHAL, LAW AND THE MODERN MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS AND RESPONSIBILITY IN AMERICAN LEGAL CULTURE, Civil War Book Review (Winter 2017)

Review of DAVID CARPENTER, MAGNA CARTA, and Review of ANTHONY ALRIDGE & IGOR JUDGE, MAGNA CARTA UNCOVERED, 53 Irish Jurist 176 (2015)

Review of KARL SHOEMAKER, SANCTUARY AND CRIME IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 400-1500, 8 Law, Culture and Humanities 517 (2012)

Review of PAOLO GROSSI, A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN LAW, 29 Law and History Review 899 (2011)

The Grand Jury in Historical Perspective, El Paso Bar Journal (Part I in Apr./May 2016 and Part II in June 2016)

Magna Carta and the Surprising Survival of Jury Trial, El Paso Bar Journal, (Part I in Feb./Mar. 2015; Part II in Apr./May 2015, and Part III in June 2015)

The Selden Society in Texas, El Paso Bar Journal (June 2014)

Review of R.B. OUTHWAITE, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS, 1500-1860, 95 Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 666 (2009)

Translation of Stemma Bulgaricum, Law and Learning in the Middle Ages 56 (Helle Vogt & Mia Münster-Swendsen eds., 2006) (with Anders Winroth)

Review of JOSEPH BIANCALANA, THE FEE TAIL AND THE COMMON RECOVERY IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND 1176-1502, 23 Law & History Review 205 (2005)

Review of ROBERT C. PALMER, SELLING THE CHURCH: THE ENGLISH PARISH IN LAW, COMMERCE, AND RELIGION, 1350-1550, 46 American Journal of Legal History 506 (2004)