Faculty -- Ken I. Kersch

Ken I. Kersch is Founding Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Associate Professor of Political Science, History, and Law at Boston College. His primary interests are American political and constitutional development, American political thought, and the politics of courts. He is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Edward S. Corwin Award (2000), the J. David Greenstone Prize (2006) from APSA's politics and history section, and the Hughes-Gossett Award from the Supreme Court Historical Society (2006). He has published articles in Studies in American Political Development, Political Science Quarterly, The Journal of Supreme Court History, The University of Chicago Law Review, The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Constitutional Commentary, Social Philosophy and Policy, The Good Society, Critical Review, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other academic, intellectual, and popular journals.
Prof. Kersch is the author of The Supreme Court and American Political Development (Kansas, 2006) (with Ronald Kahn), Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge, 2004), and Freedom of Speech: Rights and Liberties Under the Law (ABC-Clio, 2003).  He is currently working on a book on the development of constitutional conservatism between the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
Prof. Kersch is member of the bar of New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.  He received his B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude) from Williams College, his J.D. (cum laude and Order of the Coif) from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.  Kersch has been a visiting associate professor of Government at Harvard University (2008).  Prior to coming to Boston College, he was the inaugural Ann and Herbert W. Vaughan Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (2001-2002) and Assistant Professor of Politics (2003-2007) at Princeton University.

Curriculum Vitae

Office: 219 McGuinn
Phone: 617-552-4167
Email: kenneth.kersch.1@bc.edu