Lessons in Law — and Humanity

From Supreme Court visits to mock trials, John Phillips has spent decades bringing the law to life at the ASP.

BY JANA F. BROWN

For years, late U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a regular visitor to John Phillips’ Advanced Studies Program classroom. Phillips, who has taught Law & Governance on and off at the ASP since 2000, recalls when his students presented Souter with a class T-shirt.

“We were talking about habeas corpus cases, and whether you could be held by the government without being officially charged,” Phillips says. “My class decided to make shirts, and the front said, ‘You can habeas my corpus,’ (‘you can hold my body’). When they gave it to Justice Souter, he laughed and said, ‘I’m going to wear this when I jog.’”

True to his word, Souter later sent Phillips a photo of himself sporting the shirt while running in Washington, D.C. Remembering Souter’s generosity, the gesture did not surprise Phillips; the justice often spent hours each summer discussing recent Supreme Court decisions with students.

The accessibility of the legal community in New Hampshire is part of what has kept Phillps coming back to the St. Paul’s School campus each summer to teach public high school students. In his first year, Phillips was given a Rolodex of contacts by then-ASP Director Jeff Bradley. That directory led Phillips to law professors, judges, politicians and White House staff, many of whom agreed to meet with his students. The network also enabled students to attend federal and state court proceedings, often with judges staying afterward to further discuss cases.

“The State of New Hampshire is a hamlet,” Phillips says. “Everybody in the legal community knows each other, and there’s always some connection to St. Paul’s.”

Prior to arriving in Concord the first time, Phillips had no connection to the School or its summer program. After living abroad for a decade, he turned to an educational recruiting firm to consider American boarding school opportunities. Having grown up in Miami, Phillips knew little about prep school life. He followed the firm’s advice to contact programs and received a reply from Bradley, who invited Phillips to meet with him in New York.

“Before lunch ended, he asked, ‘If I offer you a job today, would you take it?’” Phillips recalls. “I thought this was going to be one year to see what teaching high school kids was like, not something I’d do long-term — and it changed everything.”

Since that summer, Phillips has devoted his career to independent schools. Following eight initial years at Kincaid School in Houston, he’s taught in Pennsylvania, New York and California. In 2024, Phillips joined St. Andrews Sewanee School in Tennessee, where he’s the interim associate head and dean of students.

Through it all, he’s been drawn back to the ASP each summer. Early on, the SPS grounds became an idyllic place for the teacher and his family to explore, along with other families who became friends. Phillips compares the comfort and familiarity of the ASP with “putting on a pair of slippers.”