Closing Speech by Dr. Al Brophy

"Realistic Reparations"

Closing speech by Dr. Al Brophy, University of Alabama Law School

A.B. University of Pennsylvania; A.M., Ph.D. Harvard University; J.D. Columbia University. Phi Beta Kappa; Editor, Columbia Law Review.

Al Brophy has written extensively on race and property law in colonial, antebellum and early Twentieth Century America. His books are Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921-Race, Reparations, Reconciliation (Oxford University Press 2002) and Reparations Pro and Con (Oxford University Press, 2006). Since 2003 he has served as book reviews editor of Law and History Review. His current research is on the intersection of property and equity, antebellum jurisprudence, antebellum libraries, and the idea of equality in early twentieth century black thought and its influence on the civil rights movement.

Before entering teaching in 1994, he was a law clerk to Judge John Butzner of the United States Court of Appeals (Fourth Circuit), practiced law with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York, and was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at Harvard University. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Boston College Law School, Indiana University, the University of Hawaii, and Vanderbilt University. Brophy teaches in the fields of property, wills and estates, and remedies. In addition, he serves as faculty advisor of the Alabama Law Review.