Rachel Cichowski
Cichowski is a Professor in the Law, Societies and Justice Department and the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and currently is Associate Chair of the Department of Political Science. She is Adjunct Faculty in the School of Law, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and a member of the European Studies Faculty at UW.
Her primary research interests include international law and organization, transnational legal mobilization, comparative constitutionalism, and transnational activism and social movements. She specializes in large n data collection and qualitative approaches to law and social science research methods and design. Cichowski’s area expertise includes human rights, global women’s rights, environmental protection and climate change, and European law and politics. Her current project, Legal Mobilization and International Justice, funded by the National Science Foundation (SES 1322161), is an unparalleled historical analysis of European Court of Human Rights judgments examining the roles of interest and advocacy organizations in the development and protection of human rights over a sixty year period. Her books include The European Court and Civil Society (Cambridge University Press, winner of the APSA Best Book Award, European Politics & Society Section) and Law, Politics and Society (co-editor, Oxford University Press). She has edited and her research appears in various edited volumes and journals including Law & Society Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy and Women & Politics.
Daniel Brinks
Daniel Brinks is Associate Professor of Government and Associate Professor of Law at University of Texas, Austin. He co-directs the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and is active in the fields of Comparative Politics and Public Law. Dan’s research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting or extending human rights and many of the basic rights associated with democracy, with a primary regional interest in Latin America. His forthcoming book examines constitutional change in Latin America since 1975, focusing especially on judicial institutions and constitutional review. Current projects include a project seeking to understand what we mean by, and the political origins of, weak institutions in Latin America, in collaboration with Steve Levitsky and Vicky Murillo; a Ford Foundation-funded project on human rights and socio-economic inequality, in collaboration with Karen Engle and others; and an NSF-funded project to build convergent research communities around crucial questions in the global study of legal institutions, in collaboration with Jeff Staton and Rachel Cichowski. He also collaborates with researchers affiliated with the Centre on Law and Social Transformation, at the Christian Michelsen Institute, on a series of projects related to the realization of rights. Recent projects address the use of courts and law to enforce social and economic rights in the developing world, the development of the rule of law in Latin America, the judicial response to police violence in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, judicial independence, and the role of informal norms in the legal order. He is also interested in the study of democracy more generally, and has written on the classification of regimes in Latin America, and on the global diffusion of democracy. Prof. Brinks was born and raised in Argentina and practiced law in the United States for nearly ten years before turning to academia.
Jeffrey K. Staton
Jeffrey K. Staton does research and teaches in the fields of comparative politics and law and politics in the Department of Political Science at Emory University, where he is a professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Politics. He is also the Judiciary Project Manager for Varieties of Democracy.
His research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Organization, Comparative Politics, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Journal of Law and Courts, International Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, and Journal of Theoretical Politics. His book, Judicial Power and Strategic Communication in Mexico was published by Cambridge University Press.
