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.
Sam Hayes is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Trinity College in the departments of Political Science and Public Policy and Law for the 2023-2024 academic year. He studies American government and public law with research on the U.S. federal courts, electoral institutions, state and local politics, and political geography. Sam completed undergraduate degrees in political science and journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and earned his PhD in political science at Boston College. During and following graduate school, Sam also taught at Wheaton College and Colby College. Sam enjoys hiking, cycling, and spending time with family and friends, especially his wife Deidre and their daughter Lucy.
Citation from the Award Committee:
“Courtroom Cartography“ is a timely and important dissertation project that is ambitious in scope, length, methodology, and topic. In it, author Sam Hayes details the role played by federal U.S. courts in drawing legislative district maps since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Baker v. Carr in 1962. It compellingly examines court roles in this process from a variety of perspectives, from collecting and studying redistricting cases decided in lower federal courts from 1960 to 2019, to evaluating the changing governing standards crafted by the Supreme Court, to comparing the composition of federal court drawn maps to those crafted by other institutions. While its contributions to scholarship are many, one of “Courtroom Cartography’s” most noteworthy is its finding that courts utilize distinct criteria from other institutions in creating legislative district maps. Courts, Hayes finds, favor maps with strict population equality and compactness, among other factors, but do not prioritize competitive elections or incumbency protection.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Christina L. Boyd (chair) of the University of Georgia, Dr. Todd A. Curry of the University of Texas at El Paso, and Dr. Charles R. Venator-Santiago of the University of Connecticut.
