| 1 | Name: | Dr. Rogers M. Smith | |
| Institution: | University of Pennsylvania | ||
| Year Elected: | 2016 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 304. Jurisprudence and Political Science | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1953 | ||
A leading scholar of American Public Law and the politics of membership, Rogers Smith’s work proceeds on both normative and empirical tracks. His early normative scholarship defended a liberal jurisprudence, spelling out its implications for U.S. Supreme Court decisions and American constitutional purposes. His empirical work documented competing visions of citizenship in U.S. history, culminating in his widely acclaimed Civic Ideals. This work details the liberal and republican traditions more richly than had hitherto been attempted, but also excavates long neglected traditions that cleave to various nativist, religious, racially supremacist, and other exclusionary ideologies. It recast debates about American exceptionalism and provided the impetus for Smith’s subsequent normative scholarship. In that work he has argued that political communities and political statuses should be reformed so as to be more inclusive, in the course of which he has made extensive contributions to the literatures on affirmative action, immigration, and minority representation. | |||