• Faculty

L. Kinvin Wroth

Titles

  • Professor of Law Emeritus

Degrees

  • LLB, Harvard University, 1960
  • BA, Yale University, 1954

Contact

Phone: 802-831-1268

Biography

L. Kinvin Wroth, professor of law at Vermont Law School since 1996 and professor emeritus since 2017, served as the school’s sixth dean from 1996 to 2004; from 2003 to 2004, he had the additional title of president. Previously, he served as dean of the University of Maine School of Law from 1978 to 1990 and was on the Maine Law faculty from 1964 until coming to VLS. His expertise includes procedure, professional conduct, and legal history. At VLS, he has taught Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, The Canadian Legal System, Race and the Law, Land Use Law, and Regulating the Maine Environment. He was director of VLS’s Land Use Institute from 2005 to 2011.

Professor Wroth received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1954 and his LLB degree from Harvard University in 1960. He served as a teaching fellow and assistant professor of law at the Dickinson School of Law from 1960 to 1962. He returned to Harvard Law as a research associate from 1962 to 1964. While at Maine Law, he held an appointment as research fellow with the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History of Harvard University from 1968 to 1974. As reporter and consultant to the Vermont Supreme Court’s rules advisory committees since 1969, he has drafted many of Vermont’s rules of procedure, evidence, and professional conduct, as well as its code of judicial conduct. He was a consultant to similar advisory committees of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine and has served on numerous court and bar committees in both states.

Professor Wroth has served as chair of the Legal History and Canadian-American (now North American) Cooperation Sections of the Association of American Law Schools and the Association’s Government Relations Committee. He has also been chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education Independent Law Schools Committee. His work on the legal career of John Adams won the American Historical Association’s Littleton-Griswold prize in 1966. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has been honored by the American Judicature Society.

Departments

  • Environmental Law Center

Courses Taught

  • Canadian Legal System
  • Comparative Law: Comparative Legal Systems
  • LLM Research Project
  • Land Use Regulation
  • Masters Externship
  • Regulating the Marine Environment