CENTER FOR LEGAL STUDIES

Biography

Nicolette Bruner is Associate Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies and the Program in American Studies. She received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Prior to joining Northwestern’s faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and taught in the Department of English at Western Kentucky University.

Prof. Bruner’s research explores how the law shapes the way humans understand and interact with the nonhuman entities and systems around them. Her current research examines how the legal doctrine of corporate personhood offers a framework for articulating the rights and responsibilities of other nonhuman entities, including animals, plants, rivers, and robots. She also teaches and works in American literature, corporate law and policy, jurisprudence, and the environmental humanities. 

Selected Courses Taught

•  Legal_St 206: Introduction to Law and Society
• Legal_St 315: Corporation in US Law and Culture
• Legal_St / Poli_Sci 332: Constitutional Law I
• Legal_St / Phil 365: Topics in the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (aka “Reality TV and Legal Theory”)
• Legal_St 360: Animal Law

Selected Publications

• “What Is a Person?” Formations, January 15, 2020.
• “Knowing the Corporation.” KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 4, no. 1 (2020): 137-58.
• “Gender and the Social Body in The Fruit of the Tree.” Edith Wharton Review 33, no. 1 (2017): 30-56.
• “Judge, Professor, Chronicler of Fairyland: James Campbell’s Legal Imaginary.” Journal of Law, Culture, and the Humanities 13, no. 3 (2017): 404-24.