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Rebecca E. Zietlow

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Distinguished University Professor

University of Toledo College of Law


Rebecca E. Zietlow is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Values and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law, where she teaches Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Civil Rights Litigation and Civil Procedure. She received her B.A. from Barnard College, and her J.D. from Yale Law School.  She is a fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and has served as Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Sections on Constitutional Law and Women in Legal Education. 

Professor Zietlow’s scholarly interest is in the study of the Reconstruction Era, including the meaning and history of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.  Professor Zietlow is also an expert on constitutional theory, examining constitutional interpretation outside of the courts.   Her most recent book, The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Her first book, Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution and the Protection of Individual Rights (NYU Press 2006), studies the history of congressional protection of rights, and the implications of that history for constitutional theory.  Her work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Florida Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Journal, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, amongst other publications.