Marianne Wesson
(my friends call me Mimi)
At right: Marianne Wesson, in a composite image of a portrait of her, the corpse in the Hillmon case and a landscape photo taken near Sun City, Kansas, a few miles from where the shooting in the Hillmon case occured."Mimi's latest project is one she calls a "nineteenth century true crime story," a book based on the famous (among law students and evidence professors) case of Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Hillmon. The Supreme Court's 1892 decision of this case is very important to the law of evidence, but it does not resolve the central mystery: who was the man who died at a remote Kansas campsite in 1879, leaving behind a corpse that some claimed to be that of John Hillmon, and some (especially the insurance companies who had insured Hillmon's life) claimed to be someone else?" -- Professor Marianne Wesson Publishes Third Novel: Chilling Effect, September 1, 2004.
Marianne Wesson
Professor, Wolf-Nichol Fellow, and President's Teaching Scholar
Criminal Law; Evidence; Trial Practice; Law and LiteratureUniversity of Colorado Law School
417 Wolf Law Building
401 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0401
Phone: (303) 492-7547
E-mail: Marianne.Wesson@colorado.edu
Author's website: http://www.wessonbooks.comEducational Background:
- J.D. University of Texas 1973 with high honors, Order of the Coif
- A.B. Vassar College 1970 cum laudi generali
Biography:
Marianne Wesson has been a member of the CU Law School faculty for over two decades, teaching and researching in the areas of criminal law, evidence, trial advocacy. She practiced criminal law as an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas and as an assistant U.S. attorney for the district of Colorado. Her articles have appeared in a wide variety of law reviews and journals, and she has served as an editor and adviser for a number of legal and academic journals.
She has been a member of the Criminal Law Test Development Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners since 1978, and currently serves as its Chair. Her expertise in the field is such that she is a commentator for several media outlets, including NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, and the Rocky Mountain News. Mimi is a regular legal correspondent for National Public Radio. You may listen to her recent interview on National Public Radio, concerning the 2004-2005 Supreme Court Term here.
She was elected to the American Law Institute in 1989. Another of Professor Wesson's abiding interests is literature. She not only teaches a seminar in "Law and Literature," and publishes scholarly articles in that area, she is also a novelist, writing fiction that explores legal and jurisprudential themes. She has had three works of fiction published, A Suggestion of Death, Render Up the Body (for which she was named a finalist for the Colorado Book Award), and her newest book, Chilling Effect, which touches on the First Amendment debate concerning the legal liability of producers of violent, sexually-oriented texts. You may listen to her interview about Chilling Effect on Colorado Public Radio.
To read more about her books, go to www.wessonbooks.com.
Recent Colorado Law News:
Published Books:
- A Suggestion of Death (2000).
- Render Up the Body (1998).
Articles:
- "Remarkable Strategems And Conspiracies": How Unscrupulous Lawyers And Credulous Judges Created An Exception To The Hearsay Rule, 75 FORDHAM L. REV. ___ (2007).
- "Particular Intentions": The Hillmon Case and the Supreme Court, 18 Law & Lit. 343 (2006).
- The Hillmon Case, the MacGuffin, and the Supreme Court, Litig., Fall 2005, at 30. (2005).
- Wesson with Bergman & LeFrancois, New Developments in Fourth, Fifth & Sixth Amendment Law, 31 N.M. L. Rev. 175 (2001).
- A Novelist's Perspective, 50 DePaul L. J. 583 (50th Anniversary symposium on Civil Litigation and Popular Culture) (2000).
- Three's A Crowd: Law, Literature, and Truth, 34 Tulsa L.J. 699 (1999).
That's My Story and I'm Stickin' to It: The Jury as Fifth Business in the Trial of O.J. Simpson and Other Matters, 67 U. Colo. L. Rev. 949 (1996).
Other Publications:
- Second Thoughts (Review of Daphne Patai, Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism), xvi The Women's Review of Books 9 (1999).
Book Chapters:
- Law and Magic in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, in, LAW AND MAGIC, forthcoming 2008 (Carolina Academic Press C. Corcos ed.) (2008).
- Wesson (with Paul Bergman), The Hillmon Lawyers Have Their Say, in TRIAL STORIES (forthcoming 2007)(Foundation Press, A. Davis & M. Tigar eds.) (2007).
- The Hillmon Case, the Supreme Court, and the McGuffin, in, EVIDENCE STORIES 277-305 (Foundation Press, R. Lempert ed.) (2006).
Book Reviews:
- Book Review, 26 Signs, No. 2 (2001).
- Reasonable Women (Review of Elizabeth M. Schneider, Battered Women And Feminist Lawmaking), xviii The Women's Review of Books 29 (2000).
- Atticus Finch Outnumbered (Review of Trial and Error: An Oxford Anthology of Legal Stories, in Jurist: Books On Law, December (eds. Fred R. Shapiro and Jane Garry) (1998).
- Life in Hell (Review of Beth Sipe and Evelyn J. Hall: I Am Not Your Victim: Anatomy of Domestic Violence), xiv The Women's Review of Books 18 (1997).
- Review of The Feel of Silence by Bonnie Poitras Tucker, 46 J. Legal Edu. 627 (1996).
Courses:
- Fall 2007 - Law and Literature - LAWS 8458-001
- Spring 2007 - Criminal Law - LAWS 5503-803
- Spring 2007 - Independent Legal Research - LAWS 7846-915
- Fall 2006 - Trial Practice - LAWS 6179-801
- Fall 2006 - Evidence - LAWS 6353-001
- Spring 2006 - Criminal Law - LAWS 5503-802
- Spring 2006 - Independent Legal Research - LAWS 7846-915
- Fall 2005 - Evidence - LAWS 6353-002
- Fall 2005 - Law and Literature - LAWS 8458-001
The above information is from
Mimi Wesson's webpage at the University of Colorado Law School website.Also see Mimi Wesson's biographical page at wessonbooks.com.
Photo at the top of this page: Marianne "Mimi" Wesson in a composite image by Jerry Ferrin of a portrait of her by Judith Phillips, the corpse in the Hillmon case and a landscape photo taken by David Rose of suncityranch.com near Sun City, Kansas, a few miles from where the shooting in the Hillmon case occured.