Lawrence Douglas
American legal academic

Lawrence R. Douglas (born October 18, 1959) is an American legal scholar. He teaches in the department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he holds the James J. Grosfeld Professorship. He is an author of journalism, fiction, and nonfiction books.
Education
Douglas received an A.B. from Brown University in 1982, a A.M. from Columbia University in 1986, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989. At Yale, he was co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities.
Career
Much of Douglas's nonfiction has focused on legal responses to state-sponsored atrocities. His two novels have focused on the question of Jewish identity.
In 2013, Douglas wrote about Guantanamo Bay detainee Abd al-Nashiri for Harper's Magazine. Douglas reviews books on legal topics for the Times Literary Supplement and is a contributing writer for The Guardian.
He has received senior fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Institute for International Education, and the Carnegie Corporation.
The public source identifies “Lawrence Douglas” as american legal academic. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lawrence, Douglas and American.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Lawrence Douglas”, the useful work is to connect “american legal academic” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1636464. VIAF identifies the subject as 54370762. The Library of Congress control number is n00101339. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1982, 1986 and 1989.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lawrence Douglas”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lawrence Douglas primary sources, Lawrence Douglas archive and Lawrence research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lawrence Douglas”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Lawrence Douglas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.