Robert Michael Ireland has died. For forty-one years after he obtain his Ph.D. in history at the University of Nebraska--he had earlier received a JD from Stanford--Professor Ireland taught in the Department of History at the University of Kentucky, where he taught introductory courses in U.S. history, American Legal History, United States Constitutional History, and a seminar on Famous American Criminal Trials. He repeatedly won teaching awards at UK and was revered as a mentor to his students. His publications included The County Courts in Antebellum Kentucky (1972), The County in Kentucky History (1976), and Little Kingdoms: The Counties of Kentucky (1977). Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau once wrote that if "the traditional Kentucky trilogy [was] good bourbon, fast horses, and beautiful women," Ireland's studies of the work of the state's county courts "altered it to a new tetralogy of horses, whiskey, hemp, and lawlessness." Professor Ireland discusses his career briefly here and at greater length here.
