Thomas Wilson Mitchell
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Thomas Wilson Mitchell is an American law professor. He is a professor at
Boston College Law School Boston College Law School (BC Law) is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. With approximately 800 studen ...
. His work focuses on property law, particularly the legal doctrines that have caused Black Americans to lose millions of acres of land since the early 1900s. Mitchell was a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Recently, he founded and became Director of the Initiative on Land, Housing & Property Rights alongside his wife, Professor Lisa T. Alexander, at
Boston College Law School Boston College Law School (BC Law) is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. With approximately 800 studen ...
.


Education and positions

Mitchell attended
Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
, where he graduated with a B.A. degree in English in 1987. He then attended the
Howard University School of Law Howard University School of Law (Howard Law or HUSL) is the law school of Howard University, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldes ...
, obtaining his J.D. degree in 1993. In 1999 he received an LLM degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was William H. Hastie Fellow. In 2000, Mitchell joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he became Professor of Law and Frederick W. and Vi Miller Chair in Law. In 2016, he joined the law faculty at Texas A&M University, with a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics. In 2022, he joined
Boston College Law School Boston College Law School (BC Law) is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. With approximately 800 studen ...
as the Robert J. Drinan, S.J. Endowed Chair. Mitchell is also the Director of the Initiative on Land, Housing & Property Rights which seeks to help disadvantaged people and communities acquire and secure important property rights.


Research

Mitchell's research has focused on the legal causes of loss of land by Black Americans. He has shown that between the Civil War and the year 1910 Black Americans came to possess about 15 million acres of land in the south, but by the end of the 20th century that number had shrunk to only about 2 million acres. Mitchell has studied the legal processes by which this loss occurred, particularly that laws that govern inheritance in cases where an owner does not leave a will and there are multiple heirs. These doctrines have, over time, caused large amounts of land to leave the heirs of Black property owners through mechanisms like forced partition sales. This type of legal dispossession of land can be viewed as a vestige of
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
. Mitchell has argued that forced sale conditions lower the expected value of a sale, and minority land owners are more likely to be placed in a force sale situation rather than voluntarily choosing to sell land; consequently, this inheritance law systematically lowers their wealth over time. This is an example of legal empiricism, which Mitchell has argued is an important methodology for understanding the causes of land loss. Mitchell was the principal drafter of a law, called the Partition of Heirs Property Act, which aimed to give the descendants of heirs a better chance of retaining property that they wish to retain. By October 2020, the Partition of Heirs Property Act had been adopted in 18 states. In 2020, Mitchell was named a MacArthur Fellow. As a part of his current employment at the Boston College Law School (2022), he has designated time to further research into Heirs Property and the issues surrounding those that are effected. Thomas Mitchell continues his research and legislative work nationwide to bring justice to disadvantaged communities.


Selected works


From Reconstruction to Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, and Community through Partition Sales of Tenancies in Common
, '' Northwestern University Law Review'' (2000)
Historic Partition Law Reform: A Game Changer for Heirs' Property Owners

United States Department of Agriculture
(2019)
Destabilizing the Normalization of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role for Legal Empiricism
, ''
Wisconsin Law Review The ''Wisconsin Law Review'' is a bimonthly law review published by students at the University of Wisconsin Law School. One issue each year is generally dedicated to a symposium In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον '' ...
'' (2005)
Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, and the Double Discount
, '' Florida State University Law Review'' (2009)


Selected awards

*
MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...
(2020)
Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award
(2020)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Thomas W. Living people Texas A&M University faculty Amherst College alumni University of Wisconsin Law School alumni Howard University School of Law alumni University of Wisconsin Law School faculty Texas A&M University alumni American legal scholars MacArthur Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics