The Edward S. Corwin Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law.
Citation from the Award Committee:
In “The Spirit of Caste: Recasting the History of Civil Rights,” Lucien Ferguson writes a compelling account of the civil rights movement and the constitutional protections on which it depends through the lens of caste. Ferguson’s project is an ambitious one in which he engages with the political thought of Black theorists like Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois to recover their understanding of the integral importance of social mobility and the eradication of caste in the fight for civil rights, a tradition Ferguson calls anti-caste constitutionalism. This focus on social mobility, Ferguson argues, significantly overlaps with the struggle for women’s rights and highlights the importance of intersectionality in the movement. He analyzes the writing of female leaders in the Black women’s club movement like activist and educator Anna Julia Cooper to illustrate the importance of the anti-caste mission in the early civil rights movement and developing social mobility for Black women. Ferguson’s dissertation builds upon the important work of theorists and historians who have used caste to understand persistent inequality in the United States. In doing so he provides substantial evidence and analysis supporting the centrality of the anti-caste focus of the early civil rights movement and the subsequent failure of the courts to fully articulate a notion of equal protection that includes economic inequality that might lead to its full realization.
Lucien Ferguson is the 2023-2025 Drinan Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School. His scholarship focuses on questions of race, capitalism, and democracy in the American legal system. Lucien completed his JD and PhD in Political Science at Northwestern University, where he was both a Law and Science Fellow and a Franke Fellow. His research interests are particularly informed by his previous professional experiences in Chicago, where he worked in civil rights and community justice and as a special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Christine L. Nemacheck (Chair) of the College of William & Mary, Dr. Rebecca Ann Reid of the University of Texas at El Paso, and Dr. Salmon A. Shomade of Emory University.