Susan M. Sterett

Susan Sterett. She is wearing a light top and accessory scarf, smiling, and standing in front of a tree.
Susan M. Sterett

Professor Emerita, Public Policy
ssterett@umbc.edu

Education
1987 Ph.D. Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program University of California, Berkeley
1983 M.A. Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program University of California, Berkeley
1980 B.A. Major: Political Science University of California at San Diego

Recent Publications

  • 2023. Litigating the Pandemic: Disaster Cascades in Court (University of Pennsylvania Press)
  • Ep. 45: COVID-19 in the Courts w/ Dr. Susan Sterett. Retrieving the Social Sciences podcast. Center for Social Science Scholarship at UMBC
  • I recommend books on disasters in a changing climate on Shepherd.com.
  • Shepherd’s booklist on pandemics is wideranging, from fiction about families, friendship, and illness, to history. It’s an invaluable resource as all of us try to make sense of what 2020 brought.
  • Shepherd.com is a wonderful site for all of us who love books. It allows readers to discover books that share a theme by wandering through book recommendations by authors.
  • 2022.  “Legal Claims and Compensation in Climate-Related Disaster.” With Laura K. Mateczun. Political Science Quarterly.
  • 2022. “Domestic Structures, Misalignment, and Defining the Climate Displacement Problem.” Social Sciences. For a special issue on climate change and displacement, Andrea Simonelli and Heather Croshaw, guest eds.
  • 2020.  Displacement, Disaster and Legal Mobilization: trial courts and legal process. With Laura K. Mateczun. Risks, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy 11(2020): 348-376.
  • 2019. Research Handbook on Law and Courts  (Edited with Lee D. Walker) (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar)
  • 2018.  “Data Access as Regulation.”  American Behavioral Scientist. 
  • 2018.  Law’s Presence, Law’s Absence: reporting on employment in the academy.  Politics and Gender 14(3): 512-551.
  • 2018.  “Symposium: Reflecting on the Profession.” Co-editor with Jennifer Diascro. PS: Political Science and Politics.
  • 2017 “Administrative law and service learning.” For a symposium in Administration and
    Society. With Nicole Dupuis and Faith Hubbard (graduate students).
    http://maint.journals.sagepub.com
  • 2016a “Bureaucratic documents and Home: Assistance after Hurricane Katrina” in Indiana
    Journal of Global Legal Studies 23(2): 567-601.
  • 2016b “Introduction” in Symposium, “Legal Mobilization and Juridification: Migration as a
    Central Case,” Law and Policy 38(4): 273-279.
  • 2015a “Disaster Assistance and Displacement: Care and Surveillance” Studies in Law, Politics
    and Society, issue entitled “Cassandra’s Curse: Forecasting Future Disasters.” Emerald
    Publishing Group.
  • 2015b “What is Law and Society? Definitional Disputes.” In Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat,
    eds., Wiley Handbook of Law and Society.
  • 2015c “Disaster, Displacement and Casework: Uncertainty and Assistance after Hurricane Katrina”
    Law and Policy.

In Progress

  • Records, freedom of information and transparency in a changing climate: FEMA and instrumental and conceptual uses. (under review).
  • Fleeing Home: law and displacement (Under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press)

Grants & Awards

  • 2019 Workshop Grant, NSF (with Bernard Fraga and Taneisha Means) “Equity in Political Science.”
  • 2017 Fulbright Specialist Award, University of Cape Town, August 2017.
  • 2016 Workshop grant, Law and Social Sciences (w/Jennifer Diascro and Judith Grant) (NSF
    SES-#1643084) ($40,751)
    Research grant, Appealing to the Authority of Data: using information: NSF Smart and
    Connected Communities (#1637205) (Adam Eckerd, VT, co-PI) ($199,999)
    Support for international travel, NSF Law and Social Sciences (#1721745) $16,576
  • 2016 Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Workshop grant, Climate Change
    and Sociolegal Studies (Anna-Maria Marshall, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    and Scott Barclay, Drexel University, co-PIs). (Value approx $20,000) Workshop
    held July 2017. Grant from NSF to support travel.
  • 2016 “Workshop: Ethics and Big Data.” With Kelly Joyce (Drexel University), co-PI. (NSF
    #1623445) ($46,355).
  • Law and Society Association, in support of editorship ($42,000)
  • Co-editor, Law and Society Review (2016-2019)
  • Co-editor, Special Issue, “Law in a Changing Climate.”  Law and Society Review (With Vitor Martins-Dias and Anna-Maria Marshall).

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