Sally Hadden

Her work on the topic was later featured in The 1619 Project and the History Channel documentary Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters.

The author of over two dozen peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, Hadden has frequently collaborated with other prominent legal historians, including Maeva Marcus and Patti Minter.

Sally E. Hadden (born 1962) is an American legal historian and professor of history.

She specializes in the histories of early America, slave law, and the American legal profession.

The youngest of five children, Hadden became interested in legal history while studying as an undergraduate with historian William Leuchtenburg.

She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1984, and her J.D. in 1989 and History Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University, where her dissertation was advised by early American historian Bernard Bailyn.

Hadden is the author of Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, among other books.

The Law and History Review described Slave Patrols as the "first full-length work" to thoroughly examine slave patrols' "origins, character, variations, demise, and legacy."

Hadden's monograph was described in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History as "thoroughly researched," "remarkably complete," and "commendably cautious."

In 2010, Hadden became a professor of history at Western Michigan University.

Prior to that time, she taught at Florida State University, University of Toledo, and Harvard University.

Hadden is married to medieval historian Robert F. Berkhofer III, son of American historian Robert F. Berkhofer.

During the Covid-19 pandemic she co-founded the Kalamazoo chapter of Feed the Fight Kalamazoo, an organization that provided meals to first responders.

With Alfred Brophy she co-edited A Companion to American Legal History (Wiley Blackwell, 2013).

She has also led a Colonial Society of Massachusetts initiative aimed at making formerly untranscribed and unpublished historic legal documents available to scholars.

Hadden has served for decades on the Law and History Review editorial board, as well as on committees for the OAH, Southern Historical Association, Massachusetts Historical Society, and the ASLH, from whom she was the first woman to receive the Craig Joyce award.

Hadden has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Humanities Center, British Library, American Historical Association, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Antiquarian Society, and other institutions.