Jason Mazzone is the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's College of Law.
What is the focus of your current work and/or subject of your current research?
Most of my research is in the field of constitutional law and history. I work on lots of issues: constitutional design, allocations of power, operations of governmental institutions, constitutional interpretation, constitutional change, and issues of individual rights. Some of my work is comparative.
What classes do you teach? What are some of the topics of those classes?
Every year, I teach Constitutional Law to first-year law students. It's the most important class they take.
Do you have any recent awards, honors, or publications that you would like to highlight?
I am co-editor of a new book on "Uses of History in Constitutional Adjudication." It contains a set of essays by scholars from around the world on the different ways in which courts invoke, frame, and argue about historical facts and circumstances when they decide cases under a national constitution. My co-editors are Francesco Biagi from the University of Bologna and Justin Frosini from Bocconi University. The book emerged from a conference the EU Center sponsored.
What is a book (academic or non-academic, in or outside your field) that you think should be more widely read?
"Dear Committee Members" by Julie Schumacher.
Is there any additional information or advice you'd like to share?
If your friends are all people you agree with, get some different friends.