Bernard Hibbitts

Bernard J. Hibbitts is a Canadian lawyer, professor, and publisher currently teaching in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Originally trained as a legal historian whose McLuhanistic early work focused on the historical relationship between law, media and the senses, he wrote a series of controversial articles in the mid-1990s on the future of law reviews and scholarly publishing in the then-just-emerging age of the Internet. He is best known today as the founder and publisher of JURIST, the Webby award-winning online legal news service, established in 1996. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of JURIST Legal News and Research Services, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

A Rhodes Scholar and former law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada for the late Justice Gerald Le Dain, Hibbitts is a graduate in law of University College, Oxford (B.A. Jurisprudence 1983), Dalhousie University (LL.B. 1984), the University of Toronto (LL.M. 1986), and the Harvard Law School (LL.M. 1988). In 1995 he received the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, the University of Pittsburgh's highest teaching honor. His work has been printed in the New York University Law Review, the McGill Law Journal, Law & History Review, American Ethnologist, and Wired Magazine.

Representing Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Hibbitts was a member of the 1975 Canadian national championship team on Reach for the Top, the long-running CBC-TV high school quiz show. He received the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award as goaltender for the Oxford Blues ice hockey team in 1983.