Post date: May 13, 2004
Professor Daniel Meltzer has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an interdisciplinary society of scholars based in Cambridge, Mass. A scholar of the American legal and political system, Meltzer joins 19 other current HLS professors who have been selected to become academy fellows in previous years.
“I am delighted to have been invited to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” said Meltzer, a 1975 graduate of the law school. “The chance to meet with and learn from distinguished scholars across the full range of disciplines promises to be extremely rewarding.”
Each year, the academy chooses scholars and practitioners in five overall fields: 1) mathematics and physics; 2) biological sciences; 3) social sciences; 4) humanities and arts; and 5) public affairs and business. Meltzer was one of nine Harvard professors selected to the academy this year.
“I am honored to welcome these outstanding and influential individuals to the nation’s oldest and most illustrious learned society,” said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. “These new members have made extraordinary contributions to their fields and disciplines through their commitment to the advancement of scholarly and creative work in every field and profession.”
Under the direction of a Committee on Studies, members of the academy contribute to studies that objectively analyze complex social, political and intellectual topics. Results of studies are frequently published in DÆDALUS, the academy’s principal publication.
Meltzer’s scholarship has focused on the role of the federal courts in the American legal and political system. His publications have explored such topics as remedies for violations of constitutional rights, state sovereign immunity and American federalism, federal habeas corpus, and the relations been the federal courts and Congress. He is a co-author, with his HLS colleagues Richard Fallon and David Shapiro, of “The Federal Courts and the Federal System,” the leading work on federal jurisdiction and the role of the federal courts.
Other members of the HLS faculty who have been selected as fellows include Lucian Bebchuk, Victor Brudney, Robert Clark, Archibald Cox, Roger Fisher, Charles Fried, Mary Ann Glendon, Charles Haar, Morton Horwitz, Benjamin Kaplan, Louis Kaplow, Randall Kennedy, Frank Michelman, Martha Minow, Robert Mnookin, Steven Shavell, Laurence Tribe, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Arthur von Mehren.
The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and others “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people.”