Steven L. Winter (an8481)

Steven L. Winter joined Wayne State University Law School in 2002 as the Walter S. Gibbs Professor of Constitutional Law. In May 2017 he was promoted to distinguished professor - the highest rank awarded by the university. In 2021, Winter was elected to the WSU Academy of Scholars - the highest recognition that can be bestowed upon WSU faculty members by their peers. Before coming to Wayne Law, he was a member of the faculty at Brooklyn Law School (1997-2002) and the University of Miami School of Law (1986-1997). He also has taught at American University's Washington College of Law and the Cardozo, Rutgers-Newark and Yale law schools.

After law school, Professor Winter clerked for Judge Paul R. Hays of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. From 1978 to 1986, he served as an assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc., where he litigated a wide range of civil rights cases concerning prisoners' rights, employment discrimination, school desegregation, police violence, capital punishment, habeas corpus jurisdiction, discrimination in the military and attorneys' fees. While there, he worked on more than a dozen U.S. Supreme Court cases, including brief and argument in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), the landmark case holding the common law fleeing felon rule unconstitutional.

Professor Winter has served as a consultant for the Helsinki Watch Committee and CIA. In 2001, he filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Intellectual Property Creators and the Society of Amateur Scientists as amici curiae in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd., 532 U.S. 722 (2002), using developments in cognitive linguistics to argue successfully against reliance on the literal language in patent law.

Professor Winter is the author of numerous articles on constitutional law and legal theory, including "The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance;" "Bull Durham and the Uses of Theory;" "An Upside/Down View of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty;" "The 'Power' Thing;" "Melville, Slavery, and the Failure of the Judicial Process;" "What Makes Modernity Late?;" and "Reimagining Democracy for Social Individuals". His book, A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life and Mind (Univ. of Chicago Press 2001), is the first systematic attempt to assess cognitive science's implications for law and legal theory. He is on the editorial board of Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal published by Berghahn Journals and on the advisory board of the Netherland Journal of Legal Philosophy published by Eleven Journals and Explorations in Language and Law published by Nova Logos.

Professor Winter teaches Property, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Regulatory State, Appellate Advocacy, and a variety of seminars on topics in legal theory that have included Ethics of the Lawyering Experience; Contemporary Problems in Legal Theory; Theory of Property; Legal Reasoning; Cognitive Science and Law; Law and Linguistics; and Racism, Cognitive Theory, and the Law.

Professor Winter is working on a book about consumerism and democracy.

Special honor:

On June 22, 2012, the Vereniging voor Wijsbegeerte van het Recht, the Dutch Association of Legal Philosophy, and Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy (fomerly Rechtsfilosofie & Rechtstheorie), the Dutch journal of legal philosophy, held a conference celebrating Professor Winter as "an outstanding international scholar who has made significant contributions to legal and political theory." Previous honorees include Glenn Patrick, Bonnie Honig, Philip Pettit, Neil Walker, and Gunther Teubner. The proceedings have been published in a special issue of the journal. Related news release. Related story in Detroit Legal News.

J.D., Columbia Law School
B.A., Yeshiva University

Property
Constitutional Law
Federal Courts
The Regulatory State
Appellate Advocacy
Civil Procedure
Seminar on Ethics of the Lawyering Experience
Seminar on Consumerism and Democracy
Seminar on Contemporary Problems in Legal Theory

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Bridges of Law, Ideology, and Commitment, 37 Touro L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022)

“Who” or “What” Is the Rule of Law?, 47 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM (2021)

Keeping Faith with Nomos, 35 TOURO L. REV. 345 (2020)

Does Justice Have a Syntax?, 69 J. OF LEGAL EDUC. 198 (2019)

What a Vote Is Worth, 19 JOURNAL OF LAW IN SOCIETY 264 (2019)

Cardozo’s Freudian Slips, 34 TOURO L. REV. 359 (2018)

The Liturgy of Dissent, 13 Journal of Law, Culture and Humanities (2017)

Jack!, 117 Columbia Law Review 1069 (2017) (In Memoriam Jack Greenberg)

A Recurrent Prague Spring, 43 Philosophy and Social Criticism 288 (2017)

When Things Went Terribly, Terribly Wrong Part II, (Jotwell 5th Anniversary Conference: Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters) (Nov. 7, 2014)

Down Freedom’s Main Line, 41 NETHERLANDS JOURNAL OF LEGAL PHILOSOPHY 202 (2012) (special issue)

Freedom’s History in the Making: A Reply, 41 NETHERLANDS JOURNAL OF LEGAL PHILOSOPHY 294 (2012)

"Frame Semantics and the ‘Internal Point of View,’"  Current Legal Issues Colloquium: Law and Language (Michael Freeman & Fiona Smith eds. Oxford University Press), February 2013

Citizens Disunited, 27 GA. STATE UNIV. L. REV. 1133 (2011) (Symposium on Citizens United v. Federal Elect. Comm., 130 S. Ct.876 (2010)

Reimagining Democracy for Social Individuals, 46 ZYGON: JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 224 (2011)

John Roberts’s Formalist Nightmare, 63 U. MIAMI L. REV. 549 (2009)

Re-Embodying Law, 58 MERCER L. REV. 869 (2007) (Symposium: Using Metaphor in Legal Analysis and Communication).

What Makes Modernity Late? 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW IN CONTEXT 61 (2005) (inaugural issue).

Melville, Slavery, and the Failure of the Judicial Process, 25 CARDOZO L. REV. 2471 (2004) (Symposium on the 20th Anniversary of Richard Weisberg’s Failure of the Word).

Brown as Icon, 50 WAYNE L. REV. 849 (2004) (ABA Symposium to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education).

When Self-Governance Is a Game, 67 BROOKLYN L. REV. 1171 (2002) (Cognitive Legal Studies: Cate¬gorization and Imagination in the Mind of the Law—A Symposium in Celebration of the Publication of A Clearing in the Forest).

Making the Familiar Conventional Again, 99 MICH. L. REV. 1607 (2001) (review essay).

What If Justice Scalia Took History and the Rule of Law Seriously?, 12 DUKE ENV’L LAW & POLICY FORUM 155 (2001) (Symposium on “Citizen Suits and the Future of Standing in the 21st Century: From Lujan to Laidlaw and Beyond”).

The Next Century of Legal Thought?, 22 CARDOZO L. REV. 747 (2001) (Symposium on Duncan Kennedy’s A Critique of Adjudication).

The “Power” Thing, 82 VA. L. REV. 721 (1996).
A Clearing in the Forest, Vol. 10, No. 3, METAPHOR & SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY 223 (1995).

Cursing the Darkness, 48 U. MIAMI L. REV. 1115 (1994) (comment symposium on the new poverty law scholarship).

The Constitution of Conscience, 72 TEXAS L. REV. 1805 (1994) (symposium on Philip Bobbitt’s Consti¬tutional Interpretation).

One Size Fits All, 72 TEXAS L. REV. 1857 (1994) (reply in same).

Human Values in a Postmodern World, 6 YALE J. L. & HUMANITIES 233 (1994) (colloquy with Martha Nussbaum).

Fast Food and False Friends in the Shopping Mall of Ideas, 64 U. COLO. L. REV. 965 (1993) (Rothgerber Conference).

Confident, But Still Not Positive, 25 CONN. L. REV. 893 (1993) (commentary on Frederick Schauer’s “Constitutional Positivism”).

For What It’s Worth, 26 LAW & SOCIETY REV. 789 (1992) (comment on presidential address).

The Meaning of “Under Color of” Law, 91 MICH. L. REV. 323 (1992).

Death Is the Mother of Metaphor, 105 HARV. L. REV. 745 (1992) (review essay).

Foreword: On Building Houses, 69 TEXAS L. REV. 1595 (1991) (introduction to “Beyond Critique: Symposium on Law, Culture, and the Politics of Form”).

An Upside/Down View of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, 69 TEXAS L. REV. 1881 (1991) (contribution to same).

Contingency and Community in Normative Practice, 139 U. PA. L. REV. 963 (1991) (contribution to “Symposium: The Critique of Normativity”).

Without Privilege, 139 U. PA. L. REV. 1063 (1991) (reply to Radin and Michelman in same).

Indeterminacy and Incommensurability in Constitutional Law, 78 CALIF. L. REV. 1441 (1990).

Bull Durham and the Uses of Theory, 42 STAN. L. REV. 635 (1990).

The Cognitive Dimension of the Agon Between Legal Power and Narrative Meaning, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2225 (1989) (contribution to “Symposium: Legal Storytelling”).

Transcendental Nonsense, Metaphoric Reasoning, and the Cognitive Stakes for Law, 137 U. PA. L. REV. 1105 (1989).

The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance, 40 STAN. L. REV. 1371 (1988).