Bill Watson
Assistant Professor of Law
About
Bill Watson is an Assistant Professor in the College of Law. He works at the intersection of public law and philosophy, with an emphasis on constitutional and statutory interpretation, precedential reasoning, and the nature of law. His scholarship appears or is forthcoming in law reviews like the Northwestern University Law Review and Boston University Law Review, as well as peer-reviewed journals like Law and Philosophy and Legal Theory. He is currently working on projects that address originalism in constitutional interpretation; the import of legal positivism for legal interpretation; and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent treatment of precedent.
Professor Watson received his JD from the University of Chicago Law School and his PhD in Philosophy from Cornell University. As a law student, he served as the Book Review & Essays Editor for the University of Chicago Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and practiced complex commercial litigation with Kirkland & Ellis. He was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School immediately prior to joining the University of Illinois faculty in 2024.
Education
PhD, Cornell University
JD, University of Chicago Law School
BA, University of Saint Thomas
Areas of Expertise
Jurisprudence
Constitutional Law
Legislation and Statutory Interpretation
Courses
Selected Publications
“Obstructing Precedent,” Nw. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming)
“Did the Court in SFFA Overrule Grutter?,” 99 Notre Dame L. Rev. Reflection 113 (2023)
“Explaining Legal Agreement,” 14 Jurisprudence 221 (2023)
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