Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance

T.H. Breen - 2017

T.H. Breen is William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University and is a distinguished Early American historian interested in the history of political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology. At the Kluge Center, Breen will work on a project titled "Enforcing the American Revolution: Law and Disorder During the War for Independence."

Past Chairs

John Sexton - 2016

The immediate past president of New York University and a legal scholar, Sexton is the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law at the NYU School of Law.

Sexton is dean emeritus of the NYU School of Law, where he served as dean for 14 years. He joined the law school's faculty in 1981, was named the school's dean in 1988, and was designated the university's president in 2001. Sexton is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a past member of the executive committee of the Association of American Universities.

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Sexton converted into a book a series of essays he wrote during his time as president of NYU. The essays are reflections on an array of topics relevant to the place and promise of higher education. Learn more

Publications (selected list):

• “Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials” (LC catalog record);
• “Redefining the Supreme Court's Role : A Theory of Managing the Federal Judicial Process” (LC catalog record);
• “Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game” (LC catalog record)

Mary Dudziak - 2015

Prominent U.S. legal historian, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law and Director of the Project on War and Security in Law, Culture and Society at Emory University, Duziak is an expert in constitutional law, legal history, diplomatic history and civil rights history.

Dudziak serves on the Historical Advisory Committee at the U.S. Department of State and the Editorial Board of the journal Diplomatic History. Dudziak's scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University, and others. She has written extensively about the impact of foreign affairs on U.S. civil rights policy during the Cold War.

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Dudziak used the Library’s collections and resources to research and write her forthcoming book, titled “Going to War: An American History,” currently under contract with Oxford University Press. Learn more

Publications (selected list):

• “War-Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences” (LC catalog record);
• “Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey” (LC catalog record);
• “Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy” (LC catalog record)
• “September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment?” (LC catalog record)

William Julius Wilson - 2015

One of America’s most prominent sociologists and one of the nation’s most distinguished African-American scholars. For a generation, Wilson has remained one of America’s most distinguished thinkers on issues of urban poverty, race and class relations, and social inequality. His 1987 book “The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass and Public Policy” is a staple in American college courses that address issues of race, class and poverty. Former President Bill Clinton praised the book as a “stunning volume” on how “the inner cities of our country have crumbled as work has disappeared.”

Wilson was a MacArthur Fellow from 1987 to 1992; was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1998; was selected by Time magazine in June 1996 as one of America's 25 Most Influential People; and is currently one of only 24 University Professors at Harvard, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. He also serves on the Scholars Council of the Library of Congress.

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Wilson revisited research on race and inequality to be found in his earlier works through the lens of recent events. In particular, Wilson continued to refine theories laid out in his seminal work “The Declining Significance of Race,” where he suggested that economic class was more critical than race in determining future life outcomes. Learn more

Publications (selected list):

• “The Declining Significance of Race” (LC catalog record);
• “When Work Disappears” (LC catalog record);
• “The Bridge Over the Racial Divide” (LC catalog record)
• “More Than Just Race” (LC catalog record)

Jennifer Hochschild - 2011

Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a scholar of the intersection of American politics and political philosophy.

A graduate of Oberlin College, Hochschild received her Ph.D. from Yale University and joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1981. She became Professor of Government at Harvard University in 2001. Hochschild was the founding editor of “Perspectives on Politics,” published by the American Political Science Association.

Hochschild’s writings explore issues of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status and immigration and their impact on political participation and political thought. Her award-winning 1985 book “The New American Dilemma” used the American experience with school desegregation to argue that small, incremental changes are less successful than rapid, extensive change imposed by nonelected officials without citizen involvement.

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Hochschild researched the politics and ideology of genomic science, specifically the links between genomics and governance. Learn more

Publications (selected list):

• “Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America” (LC catalog record);
• “The American Dream and the Public Schools” (LC catalog record);
• “The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation” (LC catalog record)
• “What’s Fair: American Beliefs and Distributive Justice” (LC catalog record)

Gerhard Casper - 2007  

Ninth president of Stanford University, and scholar of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law and jurisprudence.

Born in Germany, Casper studied law at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg before earning his master’s in law from Yale in 1962 and doctorate in law from Freiburg in 1964. Casper was assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, faculty then dean at the University of Chicago Law School, then provost of the University of Chicago. From 1992 to 2000 he was the president of Stanford University.

Casper’s writings tackle subjects such as legal realism, the workload of the Supreme Court, and the separation of powers in the United States. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles.

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Casper researched two unrelated topics: the views of German sociologist Max Weber on democratic governance and the 1795 U.S. Naturalization Act. Learn more

Publications (selected list):

• “Separating Power: Essays on the Founding Period” (LC catalog record)
• “The Workload of the Supreme Court” (LC catalog record)

Judge John T. Noonan, Jr. - 2002-2003

Accomplished jurist of the federal courts and philosopher, historian, theologian and a scholar of law.

A graduate of Harvard University and recipient of a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America and LL.B. from Harvard Law School, Noonan began his career as Special Staff to the U.S. National Security Council before joining a private law firm. In 1961 he joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame Law School and in 1967 moved to Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California, Berkeley.

As a scholar who incorporated law, philosophy, history and analysis of specific court decisions into his work, his writings on contraception, abortion, euthanasia, bribery, morality, and ethics impacted American elected officials and the Vatican. Noonan helped open a new line of thought about jurisprudence as a process of psychology, role play, value and language akin to the process of literature. In October 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed Noonan to the newly created 27th seat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where he served until 1996. 

As a scholar-in-residence at The John W. Kluge Center, Noonan investigated the teachings of the Catholic Church on four different kinds of conduct over a period of 2,000 years through letters, notarial acts, biographies, histories, and treatises: the lending of money at a profit; the buying, selling and keeping of human beings as property; the persecution of heretics as the duty of Christian rulers; and the rules on marriage and remarriage.  

Publications (selected list):

• “A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching” (LC catalog record)
• “Bribes” (LC catalog record)
• “Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists” (LC catalog record)
• “Power to Dissolve: Lawyers and Marriages in the Courts of the Roman Curia” (LC catalog record)

Lecture: “The American Research University: The Decades Ahead”

May 26, 2016

John Sexton discusses how globalization, technology and market forces are likely to reshape the form and function of the American research university in coming decades.
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Webcast coming soon

Lecture: “A Bullet in the Chamber: The Politics of Catastrophe & the Declaration of World War I ”

December 10, 2015

Mary Dudziak examines America's entry into World War I and the "politics of catastrophe" that generated sufficient public support to enter a faraway conflict.
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Lecture: “Reflections on Issues of Race and Class in 21st Century America: Revisiting Arguments Advanced in The Declining Significance of Race (1978)”

May 21, 2015

William Julius Wilson revisits arguments in his controversial book “The Declining Significance of Race” (1978) assessing the relative importance of race and class in determining the life outcomes of African Americans, Latinos and whites in contemporary America.
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Lecture: “The Political Implications of Human Genomics”

July 7, 2011

Jennifer Hochschild discusses the growth of genomic science and its potential consequences for the criminal justice system and American policymakers.
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Panel: “Dignity of the Human Person”

April 26, 2011

Scholars Jennifer Hochschild, George Chrousos, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick lead a panel of seven distinguished scholars that probes the meaning of human dignity from a variety of historical, philosophical, religious, medical, and social perspectives.
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Lecture: “Caesarism in Democratic Politics”

March 22, 2007

Gerhard Casper discusses the concept on “Caesarism” in Max Weber’s political thought, and its relevance to contemporary politics.
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