Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 12, 2004|Volume 33, Number 11

Alec Stone Sweet

YCIAS event will honor new Leitner Professor

The Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS) will hold a symposium on Monday, Nov. 15, in honor of Alec Stone Sweet, who has been named the Leitner Professor of International Law, Politics and International Studies, one of three new international, interdisciplinary chairs at the center.

Stone Sweet, who joined the Yale faculty this fall, works in the fields of comparative and international politics, and comparative and international law. In addition to the YCIAS, he holds appointments at the Law School and the Department of Political Science.

Most of Stone Sweet's research focuses on the sources and consequences of institutional change -- that is, on how social norms evolve and with what effects.

"As an expert on the role of courts in the politics of the European Union and its member countries, Professor Stone Sweet brings a comparative and international perspective to bear on scholarship that has traditionally been focused on the United States," says Ian Shapiro, the Henry R. Luce Director of YCIAS. "Stone Sweet is the foremost comparative scholar of judicial review in Europe and has reshaped the ways that lawyers and political scientists think about judicial review and the role of courts in democratic politics."

The YCIAS symposium will center on Stone Sweet's 2004 book "The Judicial Construction of Europe," in which he explains the dynamics of European integration and institutional change in the European Union since 1959.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. in Rm. 202 of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. The panelists will be: Miguel Poiares Maduro, advocate general, European Court of Justice; Otto Pfersmann, professor of legal theory, University of Paris; Wayne Sandholtz, professor of political science, University of California at Irvine; Alberta Sbragia, professor of political science and director of both the Center for Western European Studies and the European Union Center, University of Pittsburgh; and Martin Schain, professor of politics, New York University. The moderator will be Laura Engelstein, professor of history and chair of the YCIAS European Studies Council.

Stone Sweet came to Yale from Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was senior official fellow and chair of comparative government. His other books include "On Law, Politics, and Judicialization," "The Institutionalization of Europe," "Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe," "European Integration and Supranational Governance" and "The European Courts and National Courts: Doctrine and Jurisprudence."

In 2002, Stone Sweet held a visiting professorship at the Yale Law School. He also has held several other visiting professorships in the United States and Europe and received research awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Marshall Fund and the University of California Center for European Studies.

Stone Sweet received his B.A. from Western Washington University, his M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

Jim Leitner '75, for whom the new endowed chair is named, has supported a broad range of University initiatives. He serves on the President's Council for International Activities, the Investment Committee for the Yale Endowment and the University's Honorary Degree Committee. Most recently his support has made possible the new Leitner Student Observatory and provided cornerstone support for the renovation of Pierson College. At YCIAS, he has endowed the Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy and the Wolfgang Leonhard Senior Essay Prize, and established a dozen international internships for Yale College students.

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