UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The American Political Science Association (APSA) has awarded Penn State Law Assistant Professor Jud Mathews with the 2016 Edwin S. Corwin Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law.
Mathews’ dissertation, “Constitutional Rights, Private Law, and Judicial Power,” compares how rights are deployed horizontally, or allowed to regulate legal relations between private parties, in Canada, Germany and the United States. His study seeks to explain how and why courts give horizontal effect to constitutional rights, and with what effects. By taking account of the horizontal dimension of rights, Mathews offers an expanded view of the work that constitutional rights do in contemporary systems of governance.
Mathews, who is currently working on a book project related to his dissertation, takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach in his scholarship to questions of public law. He has written extensively about techniques of constitutional rights adjudication in the United States and other jurisdictions, and, in particular, about proportionality review. His scholarship in administrative law has explored the political economy of judicial deference doctrines and the connections between administrative law and democratic theory.
Prior to joining Penn State Law, Mathews was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. After law school, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
He holds a doctorate and juris doctor from Yale University and a bachelor's degree from Princeton University.
APSA’s Corwin Award is presented annually for the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted during that year or the previous year in the field of public law. It is named for the late Edward S. Corwin, a former Princeton professor and past president of APSA.