Early Career Scholars Medal
The Early Career Scholars Medal is presented every other year at the Institute’s Annual Meeting to one or two outstanding law professors whose work has the potential to influence improvements in the law. The recipients are Michelle Wilde Anderson of Stanford Law School and David Pozen of Columbia Law School. The Medal will be presented on Tuesday, May 21 by Early Career Medal Selection Committee Chair Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar of the Supreme Court of California.
Michelle Wilde Anderson is a Professor of Law and Robert E. Paradise Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Research at Stanford Law School. She is a scholar of state and local government law, and regional governance. Her work combines legal analysis, empirical research, and a deep understanding of institutions and communities to shed light on phenomena such as geographically-concentrated poverty and municipal fiscal distress. Her recent publications explore, among other topics, restructuring (such as bankruptcy, disincorporation, and receiverships) in cities and counties facing chronic poverty related to deindustrialization. As Professor Andersen shows, these issues affect not only Rust Belt capitals such as Detroit, but also post-industrial cities in California, rural counties in the West and South, and small towns across the country. She is currently completing a book about what we need most from local governments in America’s high-poverty, post-industrial areas.
Prior to joining Stanford Law School in 2014, Professor Anderson was an assistant professor of law at the University of California Berkeley Law School. She has been a research fellow at the European Commission’s Urban Policy Unit in Brussels and an environmental law fellow at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger. She clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Marilyn Hall Patel on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Professor Anderson is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Housing Law Project and a Member of the Board of Directors of the East Bay Community Law Project in Oakland, California.
David Pozen is a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He teaches and writes about constitutional law and information law, among other topics. His scholarship on the political economy and sociology of government transparency has been featured in dozens of media stories and multiple international conferences and described as “changing the way we think about a subject that had grown stale.” Much of his constitutional scholarship identifies situations in which public law practices are not working as desired—situations of “bad faith,” “self-help,” “uncivil obedience,” “constitutional hardball,” methodological “impurification”—and tries to help legal actors understand them better and respond in more candid and constructive ways. He is currently working on an empirical analysis of constitutional polarization, a critique of information fiduciaries, and a historical study on the rise of the nonprofit sector and its implications for constitutional law.
For the 2017-2018 academic year, Professor Pozen was the inaugural visiting scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. From 2010 to 2012, he served as special advisor to Harold Hongju Koh at the Department of State. Previously, he was a law clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and a special assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Medal will be presented on Tuesday, May 21 by Early Career Medal Selection Committee Chair Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar of the Supreme Court of California.