In Memoriam: William Nelson ’65

William E. Nelson ’65, Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law Emeritus, died on December 13, Dean Troy McKenzie ’00 has announced. “Bill was a defining member of the NYU Law community whose presence here spanned many decades as a student, scholar, teacher, and mentor,” McKenzie said. “Beyond his classroom and scholarly contributions, Bill was a generous colleague and a steady presence in the life of the Law School.… His commitment to careful research and to the craft of writing set a standard for many. He is remembered for his clarity of thought, his dedication to his students, and his abiding interest in the evolution of American law.”

Nelson was a member of NYU Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and graduated first in his class at NYU Law. He clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and later for Justice Byron White of the US Supreme Court, but his goal remained becoming an academic. As a student, he was mentored by legal historian John Phillip Reid and published his first piece of legal history in 1966 in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law. Studying under historian Bernard Bailyn, Nelson received a PhD in history from Harvard in 1971. Over the decades that followed, he wrote prize-winning books and countless articles that shaped legal history. His recent work focused on the history of the common law in colonial America, a project that animated much of his scholarly energy during the past decade.

Nelson joined the Law School faculty in 1979 and soon became a mainstay of the curriculum. In addition to teaching the Legal History Colloquium, he taught Contracts, Property, Torts, and Professional Responsibility to generations of students. Nelson also devoted himself to training future law teachers, most notably through his long-running seminar on legal scholarship. More than half of the students who took the course since it began in 1981 published their papers, and many went on to distinguished academic careers.  

Nelson remained actively engaged as an alumnus through long-standing support of NYU Law and service on reunion committees, including his 40th, 45th, and 55th reunions. In 2020, he was recognized with the Alumni Achievement Award.