The Law School Magazine The New York University School of Law

Notes and Renderings

Holmes Named 2003 Carnegie Scholar

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Stephen HolmesThe Carnegie Corporation of New York selected Professor Stephen Holmes as a 2003 Carnegie Scholar. Holmes, who joins 12 other leading scholars, will receive up to $100,000 over the next two years to write a book on Russian legal reform.

“The naming of Stephen Holmes as one of the Carnegie Corporation’s 2003 scholars honors one of our most distinguished authors, educators, and scholars,” said Dean Revesz. “The award also honors our Law School by recognizing the critical and creative intellectual role our faculty plays in reflecting on the significant issues of our time.”

Holmes’ research centers on the history of European liberalism and the disappointments of democracy and economic liberalization after communism. In 1984, he published Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Yale University Press). Since then, he has published articles on democratic and constitutional theory as well as on the theoretical origins of the welfare state.

In 1988, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete a study of the theoretical foundations of liberal democracy. He was a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin during the 1991 academic year. His Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Harvard University Press) appeared in 1993 and, in 1995, he published Passions and Constraint: The Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press); in this work, Holmes presents a spirited vindication of classical liberalism and its notions of constitutional government. He also co-authored, with Cass Sunstein, a book on The Cost of Rights (W.W. Norton, 1999).