Siobhan Mukerji Barco

Siobhan Mukerji Barco is a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Her primary fields of teaching and research are contract law, American legal history, and labor & employment law.

Siobhan’s research centers on the profound but previously overlooked role of legal newspapers in the development of modern American law. She demonstrates how during the late nineteenth century’s second founding era the legal news functioned as both a key source of legal authority and a conduit for the development and dissemination of ideas about law. Furthermore, shifting the perspective to newspapers reveals a more varied legal profession—one that included women and other marginalized groups. Her research has been supported by the American Society for Legal History, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, and the American Historical Association.

In addition to her academic work, Siobhan produces and hosts the American Society for Legal History’s Talking Legal History podcast and serves on the advocacy and research committees for the National Association of Women Lawyers. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History at Princeton University and received her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to entering academia, she worked as an attorney, representing both plaintiffs and defendants at a bustling civil litigation firm.