Professor Guy-Uriel E. Charles, the Charles Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors exceptional individuals and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research.
In addition to Charles, this year’s 261 newly elected members include 15 Harvard University faculty, and Harvard Law alums Yale Law Professor Justin Driver ’04, Stanford Law Professor, Emeritus, Robert Gordon ’71 and Penn Law Professor Dorothy Roberts ’80. New members will be inducted at a ceremony later this year.
A leading expert on race, politics, and election law, Charles joined the Harvard Law faculty in 2021. He serves as faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and is the inaugural chair holder of a professorship named in honor of Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. ’78, who taught at the law school for more than three decades during which he dedicated his career to racial equality and social justice.
“We are celebrating a depth of achievements in a breadth of areas,” said David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy. “These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise, and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future.”
Charles teaches and writes about election law, race and law, constitutional law, and civil procedure. He is the co-author of two leading casebooks, “Racial Justice and Law” and “Election Law in the American Political System.” In addition, he is the author of two edited volumes, “Race, Reform, and Regulation of the Electoral Process: Recurring Puzzles in American Democracy” and “The New Black: What Has Changed—and What Has Not—with Race in America,” co-written with Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack ’91.
He is currently working on a book with Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, a professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, on the past and future of voting rights, titled “The American Promise: Rethinking Voting Rights Law and Policy for a Divided America.”
Charles previously taught at Duke University School of Law, where he co-founded the Center on Law, Race and Politics. He joined Duke in 2009, was named the Charles S. Rhyne Professor of Law in 2012, and, in 2017, the Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law. He also received Duke Law School’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016.
Prior to Duke, from 2000 to 2009, he taught at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Professor of Law and as the interim co-dean from 2006 to 2008. At Minnesota, he was named the Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year for 2002–2003.
During the 2018–2019 academic year, Charles was the Bennett Boskey Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he taught Civil Procedure, Race and Federalism, and Racial Justice and Law. He was awarded Harvard Law School’s Student Government Teaching and Advising Award, which recognizes both exemplary instruction and the ability of an instructor to inspire personal and intellectual development outside the classroom.
He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for The Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. While at the University of Michigan, he was the founder and first editor-in-chief of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law. From 1995 to 2000, he was a graduate student in political science at the University of Michigan.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., the American Academy of Arts & Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good.
Other members of the Harvard Law faculty who have been selected as fellows in previous years, include: David J. Barron ’94, Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Victor Brudney, Robert Clark ’72, Richard Fallon, Noah Feldman, Roger Fisher LL.B. ’48, Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95, Charles Fried, Nancy Gertner, Mary Ann Glendon, Jack Goldsmith, Annette Gordon-Reed ’84, Charles Haar LL.B. ’48, Morton Horwitz LL.B. ’67, Vicki Jackson, Elena Kagan ’86, Benjamin Kaplan, Louis Kaplow ’81, Duncan Kennedy, Randall Kennedy, Michael Klarman, John F. Manning ’85, Daniel Meltzer ’75, Frank Michelman LL.B. ’60, Martha Minow, Robert Mnookin LL.B. ’68, Gerald L. Neuman ’80, Mark Roe ’75, Steven Shavell, William Stuntz , Cass Sunstein ’78, Laurence Tribe ’66, Mark Tushnet, Roberto Mangabeira Unger LL.M. ’70 S.J.D. ’76, Adrian Vermeule ’93, Elizabeth Warren, David Wilkins ’80 and Jonathan Zittrain ’95.