John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He writes in the history of American law and in torts, including American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law form Smallpox to COVID-19 (Yale University Press, 2020), Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Free Press, September 2012), Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law (Harvard University Press, 2007), and the prizewinning book, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (Harvard University Press, 2004).