Professor Elizabeth Bussiere
Professor Bussiere was the winner of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Service in 2020. Elizabeth Bussiere has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and received a grant from the American Philosophical Society for a book on jury nullification and the decline of popular justice. From this project, she has published an article in Law and History Review (2016) titled "Trial by Jury as ‘Mockery of Justice’: The Ironic Judicial Legacy of Antimasonry. Her publications include a book, (Dis)Entitling the Poor: The Warren Court, Welfare Rights, and the American Political Tradition (Penn State Press), which received an honorable mention from the American Political Science Association in 1998 for the Best Book on Women and Politics; an article on “The Failure of Constitutional Welfare Rights in the Warren Court,” published in Political Science Quarterly; a revised version of that article, which appeared in Supreme Court Decision-Making: New Institutionalist Approaches (University of Chicago Press); and the lead article, “The ‘New Property’ Theory of Welfare Rights: Promises and Pitfalls,” published by the Committee on the Good Society, a group consisting of the most prominent scholars in the social sciences, the humanities, and law.
Impact
The Elizabeth Bussiere Scholarship is named for Elizabeth Bussiere, a political science professor at UMASS Boston, for her dedication and commitment to UMB students. It is awarded to political science majors based on their outstanding academic performance and their interest in public policy, law, social justice, and community service, broadly defined and related to U.S., comparative, or international politics.