Alison LaCroix

Alison L. LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where she is also an Associate Member of the History Department. She is a scholar of US legal history specializing in constitutional law, federalism, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal thought.

Professor LaCroix's second, prizewinning, book is The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (Yale University Press, 2024). Supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, the book examines the transformation of US constitutional law between the Founding and the Civil War. Professor LaCroix is also the author of The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard University Press, 2010). In 2021, President Biden appointed her to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Professor LaCroix holds a PhD in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University. 

Professor LaCroix has served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History, and she is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of American Constitutional History, the Journal of Supreme Court History, the American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of the Early Republic. She teaches constitutional law, legal history, and federal courts. In 2025, Professor LaCroix received the Best Overall Communicator Award from the University of Chicago.