Stanford Law Scholars Awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

Bernadette Meyler, the Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life at Stanford Law School, and Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at FSI, have been awarded 2020 Guggenheim Fellowships. This prestigious honor recognizes mid-career scholars, artists and scientists who have demonstrated a previous capacity for outstanding work and continue to show exceptional promise.

Bernadatte Meyler
Professor Bernadette Meyler

Bernadette Meyler is a scholar of British and American constitutional law and of law and the humanities.

“I am thrilled to have received a Guggenheim Fellowship and incredibly grateful to the friends and mentors who have supported my work.” Meyler said.

Meyler, who will be in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center next year, will use her Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her book on constitutional interpretation, Common Law Originalism, which looks at the various meanings of constitutional terms and phrases. She also plans to finish an introductory textbook on law and literature designed for undergraduate and graduate classrooms as well as readers generally interested in the subject.

“I aspire to begin more serious research as well into my next project, which will involve delving into the historical rise of majoritarianism and its implications for legal theory,” Meyler said.

Nathaniel Persily
Professor Nathaniel Persily

With his fellowship, Nathaniel Persily plans to build on his work at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and its Program on Democracy and the Internet. He had intended for his fellowship project to be a book on ways the internet and social media platforms place unique stress on democracy in the U.S. and around the world. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the direction of Persily’s research, and he said he plans to spend much of the year researching and writing about the pandemic’s effect on the administration of the 2020 election.

“As has happened to me frequently over the last decade, events are overtaking my research, and for the few academics who work in the area of election administration, the challenge the pandemic poses is unprecedented and requires the participation of public interested scholars to understand and address the critical problems we are seeing in the states,” Persily said.

Persily was the senior research director of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013, where he dealt with topical issues such as lines at polling places and preparing for natural disasters and voting.

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