Norval Morris
American legal academic
Norval Ramsden Morris (1923–2004) was an Australian-educated American law professor, criminologist, and advocate for criminal justice and mental health reform. He served as the 7th dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1975 to 1979.
Morris was a strong influence on United States law professors and criminologists including James B. Jacobs (NYU), Marc Miller (Arizona), Kevin Reitz (Minnesota), Michael Tonry (Minnesota), Franklin E. Zimring (Berkeley), Albert Alschuler (Northwestern) and Myron Orfield (Minnesota). He was a close friend and colleague of U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Harry A. Blackmun and of federal district court judge Abner Mikva.
Morris was widely regarded as an advocate for the rights of inmates in prisons and mental hospitals. His theories on prison reform were implemented at the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner, N.C.
Morris was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology, a board member of the Chicago Bar Foundation (1982–88), a chairman of the board and board member of the National Institute of Corrections.
Career
Norval Morris was born in 1923 in Auckland, New Zealand. He served in the Australian Army in World War II. He earned LL.B. and LL.M. degrees at the University of Melbourne, where he was a resident student at Trinity College from 1940, and gained second-class honours in Introduction to Legal Method and Law
of Wrongs (Civil and Criminal) in 1941. He received his PhD in law and criminology in 1949 from the University of London, with his thesis titled, The law and practice relating to habitual criminals, and was appointed to the Faculty of Law at the London School of Economics.
In the 1950s, Morris was chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Capital Punishment in Ceylon.
“Norval Morris” enters the record as american legal academic. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Norval, Morris and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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