William Chriss

William J. Chriss is an experienced teacher, author, media commentator, and scholar, holding graduate degrees in law, theology, and political science. He was nominated for the Rhodes Scholarship by The University of Texas and then became one of the younger recent graduates of the Harvard Law School, receiving a Howe fellowship in Civil Liberties and Anglo-American Legal History and earning his law degree at the age of 23. Mr. Chriss has taught Political Philosophy, History, and Constitutional Law within the Texas A&M University system, and he is now a Ph.D. candidate in Legal and Political History at The University of Texas, where he was awarded an endowed doctoral fellowship under Dr. H.W. Brands. Mr. Chriss’s dissertation is a constitutional history of 19^th century Texas that focuses on the ways in which laws and rules enshrine cultural identities, a subject also dealt with in his theology master's thesis, St. Nikodemos and The Rudder Concerning Heterodox Baptisms: A Study in Canonology. His new book, In Defense of the Noble Lawyer: The Truth about Attacks on Democracy’s Chosen Profession, 1976-2008 is a book-length history of modern tort reform, lawyer bashing, and their anti-democratic consequences.