Skip to main content

Department of Political Science

Edward Rubin

University Professor
University Professor of Law

Edward Rubin conducts interdisciplinary research in law and political science. He received his BA from Princeton and his JD from Yale. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Judge Jon Newman and practicing entertainment law in New York City, he joined the law school faculty at the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1982. There, he began working with political scientists in the Law School's interdisciplinary Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, and wrote two books and numerous articles with his main collaborator, Malcolm Feeley. Rubin served as Associate Dean at Boalt Hall for two years. In 1998, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In July 2005, he became Dean of Vanderbilt Law School, and led an initiative to reform the law school curriculum. He was appointed University Professor of Law and Political Science in 2009. Rubin's research focuses on the advent of the administrative state and its effects on law, governance, and concepts of politics and morality. He has also written in the areas of financial services, prisons and punishment theory, and legal scholarship. He has served as a consultant on administrative law to the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China.

Representative publications

  • Rubin, Edward, and Malcolm Feeley. "Federalism and Interpretation." Publius 38(2008): 167-191.
  • Rubin, Edward. Beyond Camelot: Rethinking Politics and Law for the Modern State. Princeton University Press, 2007.
  • Rubin, Edward. "Puppy Federalism and the Blessings of America." ANNALS 574.1(2001): 37-51.
  • Rubin, Edward, and Malcolm Feeley. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  • Rubin, Edward, ed. Minimizing Harm: A New Crime Policy for Modern America. Westview Press, 1999.
  • View Curriculum Vitae