UW News

July 8, 2010

Memorial planned for Stuart Scheingold, UW scholar of socio-legal studies

A memorial service will be held at the UW in October for Stuart A. Scheingold, a professor emeritus of political science known for his scholarship on law, society, and politics, who died June 24. He was 78 and had suffered from leukemia.

Scheingold was widely known for his work on the politics of crime and punishment as well as the work of activist lawyers, who use their legal skills to advance social justice. His early work on the European community is still read and cited often.

“He was quite simply one of the world’s leading commentators on law and politics,” said Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College who co-directed with Scheingold the multivolume, internationally oriented Cause Lawyering Project.

Scheingold wrote or edited 15 books, the most famous of which is The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change.

“As a teacher, I can tell you that The Politics of Rights continues to move readers, especially in law school,” said Anne Bloom, a former graduate student of Scheingold’s. She added that many students referred to their professor as “the fabulous Stu Scheingold.”

Scheingold “set a template for his graduate students,” said David Olson, a UW emeritus professor of political science who knew Scheingold for 45 years.

Toward the end of his life, Scheingold turned to new research: politics and literature. He wrote about political estrangement and loss of political agency as depicted by writers such as Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. Continuum publishers rushed production of The Political Novel: Re-Imagining the Twentieth Century, so that Scheingold was able to hold a hard copy shortly before his death.

Scheingold received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, then taught at several universities, including the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Davis before coming to the UW in 1969.

In 2001, the Law and Society Association awarded Scheingold the Harry J. Kalven Jr. Prize. Three years later, the American Political Science Association presented him a Law and Courts Lifetime Achievement Award.

Earlier this year, the UW Department of Political Science created a term professorship honoring Scheingold.

The Stuart and Lee Scheingold Endowment for Social Justice has since been established in hopes of making a permanent professorship. Donations may be made to the Stuart and Lee Scheingold Endowed Fund in Social Justice. (Make checks to the UW Foundation, noting the specific fund, and send to Ann Buscherfeld, Department of Political Science.)