Mary Dudziak
Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science
Download vCard
mdudziak@law.usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-4789
Fax: (213) 740-5502
Room: 462
Personal Website: http://www.mdudziak.com
Mary L. Dudziak is a legal historian whose research focuses on international approaches to legal history and the impact of war on American democracy. She has written extensively about the impact of foreign affairs on civil rights policy during the Cold War and other topics in 20th-century American legal history. Professor Dudziak teaches Constitutional Law, Procedure, Comparative Constitutional Law, Constitutional Politics in Africa, the Constitution in the 20th Century, Law and War in the 20th Century, and a seminar on Law and Social Change in Post-1945 America. In 2008-09 she was an affiliated scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, and a distinguished visitor at the University of Maryland Law School.
Professor Dudziak is the author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (Oxford University Press, 2008); Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000); editor of September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003); and co-editor (with Leti Volpp) of Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, a special issue of American Quarterly (September 2005), reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press in March 2006. Her new book project, How War Made America: A 20th Century History, is under contract with Oxford University Press. Her articles on civil rights history and 20th-century constitutional history have appeared in numerous law reviews and other journals. She founded the Legal History Blog (http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/) and contributes to Balkinization (http://balkin.blogspot.com/).
Professor Dudziak received her A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D., M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Prior to joining USC Law in 1998, she was a law clerk for Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a professor of law and history at the University of Iowa. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History. She also serves as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and has been a member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Works in Progress
- How War Made America: A 20th Century History (under contract with Oxford University Press).
- “Law, War, and the History of Time”
- Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (Oxford University Press, 2008). - (www)
- Co-Editor, Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders (with Leti Volpp). American Quarterly (special issue, September 2005; reissued as a collection by The Johns Hopkins University Press, May 2006). - (www)
- Editor, September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003). - (www)
- Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000). (Paperback edition, Princeton University Press, 2002). - (www)
- “A Sword and A Shield: The Uses of Law in the Bush Administration,” in The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment , Julian Zelizer, ed. (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2010).
- “The Case of ‘Death for a Dollar-Ninety-Five’: Miscarriages of Justice and Constructions of American Identity," in Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice, Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat, eds., (New York University Press, 2009).
- "Making Law, Making War, Making America," in The Cambridge History of Law in America, Christopher Tomlins and Michael Grossberg, eds. (Cambridge University Press 2008). - (SSRN)
- "Thurgood Marshall’s Bill of Rights for Kenya," 11 Green Bag 2d 307 (Spring 2008). - (SSRN)
- "Working Toward Democracy: Thurgood Marshall and the Constitution of Kenya," 56 Duke Law Journal 721 (December, 2006). - (Hein)
- “Law and Social Context in Civil Rights History,” Review essay, Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004), 72 Chicago Law Review 429 (Winter 2005). - (SSRN) - (Hein)
- “The March on Washington, at Home and Abroad.” Revue Française d'Études Américaines (2005).
- “Brown as a Cold War Case.” 91 Journal of American History 32 (June 2004).
- “Who Cares about Courts? Creating a Constituency for Judicial Independence in Africa: A Review of Jennifer Widner, Building the Rule of Law: Francis Nyalali and the Road to Judicial Independence in Africa (2001),” 101 Michigan Law Review 1622 (2003) (review essay). - (Hein)
- “Birmingham, Addis Ababa and the Image of America: International Influence on U.S. Civil Rights Policy during the Kennedy Years,” in Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988, Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed. (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). - (SSRN)
- “The Politics of ‘The Least Dangerous Branch’: The Court, the Constitution and Constitutional Politics Since 1945,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig, eds. (Blackwell Press, 2002).
- John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2007-08
- School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., 2007-08
- American Council on Learned Societies, Fellowship, 2006-07