Democracy Studies Speaker Series

Melissa Schwartzberg

“Supermajority Rule and Democracy”

Friday, November 30, 2012
12:30 p.m.
Barrister Club, 25 W. 11th Ave., Columbus, OH 43201
(Located across 11th Avenue from Drinko Hall and above Panera Bread)

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Melissa Schwartzberg is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. As a political theorist, her research centers on the historical origins and normative consequences of rules governing democratic decision-making. She also has special interests in ancient Greek institutions and political thought, and in modern political thought concerning institutional design, especially that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham.

Her first book, Democracy and Legal Change, retrieves and defends the historically salient view that democracies regularly change their laws, while examining the circumstances in which democracies have enacted immutable rules. She is currently completing a second book, Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule, and is beginning to conduct research on the democratic pedigree of the jury. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of Political Philosophy, and Political Theory, among other journals. 

She is currently executive co-director of the Association for Political Theory (2010-2013). From 2002-2006, she was an assistant professor of political science at The George Washington University.

She holds a Ph.D. from New York University.

Melissa Schwartzberg
Associate Professor of Political Science
Columbia University