Faculty
Howard Schweber
Howard Schweber joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Political Science in Fall 1999. He received his PhD in Government from Cornell University and an MA in History from the University of Chicago after spending five years practicing law in Seattle and San Francisco. Schweber teaches courses focusing on constitutional law and legal and political theory. He is the author of “Democracy and Authenticity” (Cambridge, 2012), “The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism” (Cambridge, 2007), “The Creation of American Common Law”(Cambridge, 2004), and “Speech, Conduct, and the First Amendment” (Peter Lang, 2003) and co-editor of “The Conservative Legacy of Antonin Scalia” (Lexington 2020) and “James Madison’s Constitution” (Kansa 2021), as well as articles, essays and book chapters on a variety of related topics. His current areas of research include comparative constitutionalism and democratic theories of representation.
In addition to his position in the Political Science Department, Schweber is an affiliate faculty member of the Law School the Legal Studies program, and Integrated Liberal Studies. From 2011 to 2013 he was Visiting Professor and the first Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, and from 2013 until 2018 he served as Special Advisor to the President of NU. In 2012 he was the Australian Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Politics; he has been a guest instructor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan) and delivered invited lectures in Austria, Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Jordan, and Israel.
Schweber is a regular guest on Wisconsin television and radio programs and gives frequent interviews in the local, national, and international press. He has been a contributing blogger at Huffingtonpost.com and an occasional guest blogger on other sites, operates a blog at thesecondtimeasfarce@blogspot.com and is a frequent public speaker both on and off campus.
Schweber serves as the faculty advisor and coach for the UW College Mock Trial Team, the UW College Moot Court Team, and the “Sifting and Winnowing,” Wisconsin’s undergraduate politics and law journal.
In 2004 Schweber was the recipient of the William H. Kiekhoffer Award for Distinguished Teaching. He has also twice been selected as the Pi Sigma Alpha Professor of the year, has been named a Distinguished Honors Faculty member, and has received numerous other teaching awards while at Wisconsin. Earlier, while a PhD student at Cornell University, Schweber received the Stephen and Marjorie Russell Award for Outstanding Teaching, the highest award for teaching at any level awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a Leon Epstein Faculty Research Fellow and the founding editor of Constitutional Studies.