Faculty Directory
  • Faculty

Peter Teachout

Titles

  • Professor of Law

Degrees

  • MA, University of Sussex, England, 1967
  • JD, Harvard University, 1965
  • BA, Amherst College, 1962

Contact

Phone: 802-831-1288

Biography

Professor Peter R. Teachout is recognized for his expertise regarding the constitutional law and history of Vermont and the United States. The courses he has taught at Vermont Law School include Constitutional Law, International Regulation of Trade, Legal History, Jurisprudence, and Argument and Culture.


Professor Teachout received his BA degree from Amherst College in 1962 and his JD degree in 1965 from Harvard Law School, where he was a John Woodruff Simpson Fellow. After receiving his MA degree from the University of Sussex (England), he served in the Department of Intelligence of the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1969. He then returned to Harvard as a special graduate student and served from 1970 to 1975 as a member of the faculty of the University of Washington. During this period, he also served as a visiting professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and as a fellow in law and the humanities at Harvard Law School.

He joined the VLS faculty in 1975. Since then, he has also been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the University of Chicago and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University and Dartmouth. His expertise has been frequently tapped by Vermont’s Legislature and judiciary, which has sought his testimony and advice on the balanced budget amendment, flag desecration legislation, the redrafting of the state Constitution in gender-neutral language, education financing, and civil union legislation. He is the director of VLS/University of Trento and VLS/University of Seville study abroad courses. He is working on a biography of Thomas Reed Powell, a leading early realist and influential court critic during the first half of the 20th century.

Curriculum Vitae

Expertise

  • Constitutional Law

Courses Taught

  • Comparative Constitutional Law
  • Constitutional Law
  • European Union Law - Trento
  • First Amendment Law
  • International Regulation of Trade
  • Law of the European Union