The constitutional law professor’s fellowship project will be a vital contribution to contemporary conversations about constitutional powers and rights.
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor Mark Graber, JD, PhD, MA, has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. This year is the fellowship’s centennial, making Graber a member of the celebrated 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows. The constitutional law professor’s fellowship project will be a vital contribution to contemporary conversations about constitutional powers and rights.
“We are delighted that the development of Professor Graber’s next important book will be supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and proud that he is one of this country’s most eminent scholars in the constitutional law space,” said Maryland Carey Law Dean Renée Hutchins Laurent, JD.
Graber, who joined the Maryland Carey Law faculty in 2002, is a leading expert in constitutional law and politics and considered a founder of the American Constitutional Development movement, which analyzes constitutional doctrine combining tools from the disciplines of law, history, government, and American politics.
From his early work challenging the rooted model of the counter-majoritarian problem in constitutional courts, to his most recent book “Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty: The Forgotten Goals of Constitutional Reform After the Civil War,” Graber has been on the leading edge of consciousness shifting in the constitutional law world for the past four decades. He is the author of five books, 10 edited collections, and more than 200 scholarly articles, book chapters, and other writings.
Guggenheim Fellows receive a monetary stipend “to pursue independent work at the highest level under the freest possible conditions,” according to a statement by the Guggenheim Foundation. Graber’s independent work is titled “Making the Thirteenth Amendment’s Constitution Work.” The book is part of a multi-volume series on constitutional reform during Reconstruction. The first volume, “Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty,” was published in 2023. Reflecting on the work’s relevance, the Supreme Court of Colorado cited Graber’s scholarship associated with “Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty” in justifying its decision to disqualify then- former president Donald Trump from the presidential ballot in that state.
“Making the Thirteenth Amendment Work” will concentrate on how Republicans in the few months after the Civil War understood the Thirteenth Amendment and the institutional reforms that they thought were necessary to make the amendment’s constitution work better. While the book will focus on a moment in history over 150 years ago, it will have similar kinds of contemporary and comparative implications as the first volume.
“Constitutions then and now, in the United States and globally, are likely to work as intended only when those constitutions configure and constitute politics in ways that provide the foundation for the wise exercise of constitutional powers and the commitment to protecting constitutional rights,” Graber said.
Graber was awarded the fellowship after a rigorous application and peer-review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants. He looks forward to mingling with the other members of the 2025 class who represent 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 83 academic institutions, 32 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces.
“To be in the company of these extraordinary scholars, artists, and activists is humbling,” Graber said.
In 2016, Graber was named a University System of Maryland (USM) Regents Professor, the most prestigious USM rank. The seventh Regents Professor in USM history, he is the only professor on the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus to hold the title. In 2023, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association.
With a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Dartmouth College, a PhD in political science from Yale University, and a JD from Columbia Law, Graber previously taught in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park for more than 10 years. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard College, Yale Law School, the University of Pennsylvania, Oregon Law School, the University of Toronto, the University of Milan, and Radzyner Law School in Israel.