Keith J. Bybee is the Paul E. and the Hon. Joanne F. Alper '72 Judiciary
Studies Professor at the College of Law, and Director of the Institute for the Study of
the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media. He is also Professor of Law and Professor of
Political Science. His teaching interests include the rule of law, courts, the politics
of race and ethnicity, LGBT rights, American politics, and political philosophy. His
articles have appeared in a number of academic journals. He is author of Mistaken
Identity: The Supreme Court and the Politics of Minority Representation (Princeton
University Press, 1998; second printing, 2002), an examination of the theories of
political identity at stake in the debate over race-conscious redistricting. He is also
editor of Bench Press: The Collision of Courts, Politics, and the Media (Stanford
University Press, 2007), a collection of essays on the current state of judicial
independence written by legal scholars, sitting judges, and working journalists. His most
recent book, All Judges Are Political – Except When The Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies
and the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press, 2010), examines the role of courtesy and
hypocrisy in the judicial process. He received his Ph.D. from the University of
California, San Diego in 1995. Until 2002, he was a faculty member in the Department of
Government at Harvard University.

Articles

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Open Secret: Why the Supreme Court has Nothing to Fear From the Internet, Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University (2012)

The United States Supreme Court has an uneasy relationship with openness: it complies with some...

 

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Efficient, Fair, and Incomprehensible: How the State 'Sells' Its Judiciary (with Heather Pincock), College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2010)

Sociolegal scholars often approach dispute resolution from the perspective of the disputants, emphasizing how the...

 

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Managing Radical Disputes: Public Reason, the American Dream, and the Case of Same-Sex Marriage (with Cyril Ghosh), College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2008)

This paper proposes that ambiguous arguments play a crucial role in the management of radical...

 

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Good Manners, Gay Rights and the Law, College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2005)

In this paper, I argue that the expansion of LGBT rights requires engagement with the...

 

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Legal Realism, Common Courtesy, and Hypocrisy, College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2005)

In the United States, courts are publicly defined by their distance from politics. Politics is...

 

Books

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All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies and the Rule of Law, College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2010)

This paper contains the introduction to the new book, All Judges Are Political—Except When They...

 

Contributions to Books

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The Rule of Law is Dead! Long Live the Rule of Law!, College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2009)

Polls show that a significant proportion of the public considers judges to be political. This...