Thomas Keck is the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics as well as a Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His research areas include constitutional courts, specifically conservative judicial activism, and the use of courts and other legal tactics by movements for social change. He recently published Judicial Politics in Polarized Times, a book analyzing the decision-making of judges during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras, and he currently leads a National Science Foundation-funded project on political beneficiaries of the judicial enforcement of constitutional free speech norms. Professor Keck has also published in a number of leading journals on political science and socio-legal research, including the American Political Science Review and the Law & Society Review. As Sawyer Chair, Professor Keck directs the Sawyer Law and Politics Program, an initiative dedicated to advancing teaching and research in the fields of law and politics.

Professor Keck received his Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University. He is currently an associate editor of Politics and Gender.