
Biography
Jamie Mayerfeld is Professor and Chair of Law, Societies & Justice, and Professor of Political Science. He is also a faculty associate of the Center for Human Rights and an associate faculty member of the Program on Ethics.
Mayerfeld specializes in political theory and human rights. He is the author of the book The Promise of Human Rights: Constitutional Government, Democratic Legitimacy, and International Law (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). In this book, he develops an account of constitutional democracy as a cooperative project enlisting both domestic and international guardians to strengthen the protection of human rights. His other publications include Suffering and Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1999) and articles on various topics in political theory, moral philosophy, human rights, and international criminal law. His most recent article is "Religion, Scripture, Morality," Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 32 (2024).
Mayerfeld has taught courses on the history of political thought; democratic theory; contemporary theories of justice; nationalism; human rights theory; freedom of speech and religion; political theory of the climate crisis; the philosophy of punishment; human rights law; US constitutional law; and US detention policy in Guantanamo Bay.
In 2019-20, Mayerfeld served as president of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA). Currently, he is co-coordinator of Political Scientists for Sustainability.
Awards and Honors
Research
Selected Research
- Jamie Mayerfeld. Why Constitutional Democracy Requires International Human Rights Law,” Human Rights Review 19 (2018): 369-71.
- Michael McCann, with George I. Lovell. Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism. With George Lovell. University of Chicago Press. 512 pp. In cloth and paper, April, 2020.
- The Promise of Human Rights: Constitutional Government, Democratic Legitimacy, and International Law. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
- Jamie Mayerfeld. 2012. “No Peace Without Injustice: Hobbes and Locke on the Ethics of Peacemaking.” International Theory, vol. 4, no. 2: 269-99.
- Jamie Mayerfeld. 2011. “A Madisonian Argument for Strengthening International Human Rights Institutions: Lessons from Europe.” In Luis Cabrera, ed., Global Governance, Global Government: Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System, SUNY Press, pp. 211-51.
- Jamie Mayerfeld. 2011.“The High Price of American Exceptionalism: Comparing Torture by the United States and Europe after 9/11.” In Michael Goodhart and Anja Mihr, eds., Human Rights in the 21st Century: Continuity and Change since 9/11, Palgrave/Macmillan, pp. 107-30.
- Jamie Mayerfeld. 1999. Suffering and Moral Responsibility, Oxford University Press.