Sean M. Kammer

Graduate Student

Contact Information:

612 Oldfather Hall

Department of History
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
Phone: (503) 768-6799
E-mail:

Curriculum Vitae: Curriculum Vitae

Joined the Department:

August 2007

Mr. Kammer is a visiting assistant professor of environmental and natural resources law at Lewis & Clark Law School, where he teaches courses in mining and public lands law. He received his juris doctor with honors from Duke University in 2004, practiced for two years at Baker & Hostetler, LLP in Cleveland, Ohio, and is currently a candidate for a Ph.D. in American legal history.

Mr. Kammer’s research interests generally concern the intimate relationship between legal change and broader social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental processes. Since joining the history department at the University of Nebraska in 2007, he has written conference papers and articles on the Progressive conservation movement and its impact on railroad land grants, the frontier claim associations of the mid-nineteenth century, the Supreme Court’s misuse of history in its First Amendment jurisprudence, and the separation of church and state in American and German public schools.

Mr. Kammer is currently in the process of conducting research for his dissertation, which will examine the legal history of the land grant railroads and forest management in the Pacific Northwest during the first half of the twentieth century. Particularly, it will examine the policies of the transcontinental land-grant railroad companies regarding natural resources, the multi-layered and sometimes contradictory responses of the several agencies of law to the railroads’ practices, and the role of both public and private actors in bringing about modern natural resources law and policy. A central theme will be the resiliency of law to social forces and the extent to which legal change—far from reflecting social transformations or the demands of certain social groups, or merely following the internal logic of legal doctrines themselves—is influenced by deeply ingrained legal-cultural values, short-sighted decision making, and the complex relationships among legal, political, and economic actors.

Additionally, Mr. Kammer is writing a law review article examining legal questions surrounding the practice of "wilderness restoration." It explores fundamental questions about the "nature" of wilderness itself and how this "nature" has been embedded in American law.

Expertise:

• U. S. Legal
• North American West
• U.S. Nineteenth Century
• U.S. Twentieth Century

Education:

University of Wyoming, B.A., magna cum laude, History, 2000
Duke University School of Law, J.D., cum laude, 2004