Home / Faculty

Politics Faculty

Robert L Meister
  • Title
    • Professor of Social and Political Thought
    • Department of the History of Consciousness
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Social Sciences Division
    • History of Consciousness Department
  • Affiliations Politics Department
  • Phone
    831-459-2781, 831-459-4563
  • Email
  • Office Location
    • Humanities 431
  • Office Hours T 2-4pm
  • Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064

Research Interests

Political and moral philosophy, law and social theory, Marxian theory, institutional analysis, anti-discrimination law

Selected Publications

After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights, Columbia University Press, 2011

"Beyond Satisfaction-Desire, Consumption, and the Future of Socialism," Topoi, 15, 2, September 1996.

"Sojourners and Survivors-Two Logics of Constitutional Protection," Studies in American Poltitical Development, 9, 2, Fall 1995.

"Is Moderation a Virtue?" In Virtue, Love, and Form, T. Irwin and M. Nussbaum (eds.), Apeiron, 26, 3-4, 1993.

Political Identity: Thinking Through Marx. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

"The Logic and Legacy of Dred Scott: Marshall, Taney, and the Sublimation of Republican Thought," Studies in American Political Development, 3, 1989.

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Harvard University, 1976

My political thought concerns the moral relations between the beneficiaries of social and political injustice and its victims. "After Evil" (2011) is a critique of the global discourse of humanitarian that followed the fall of Communism in 1989. My next book, "The Wealth of Societies" (1015) is about the global discourse of financialization, and aftermath of the near-fall of capitalism in 2008. Earlier revious publications have engaged Marxist analysis, the politics of recognition, political theology, US (and comparative) constitutional law, and legal theory.