Melissa Schwartzberg is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values (effective 7/1/2026). Her primary research and teaching interests are in democratic theory, the origins and justification of democratic institutions (particularly in the ancient world), and the history of political thought. 

Schwartzberg is the author of three books: Democratic Deals: A Defense of Political Bargaining (Harvard, 2024), with Jack Knight, which received the 2025 David Easton Award; Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule (Cambridge, 2014), which received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize; and Democracy and Legal Change (Cambridge, 2007). She is also the editor or co-editor of seven NOMOS volumes (the annual yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy), and of many articles in leading political science and political theory journals. 

She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew W. Mellon "New Directions" Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. 

Her current projects include Sheep May Safely Graze: Jurors, Knowledge, and Democracy, a book on the jury as an institution of local knowledge, dating to antiquity. 

Before coming to Princeton, Schwartzberg taught at New York University (where she held a Silver Professorship and served as chair of the Department of Politics), Columbia University, and The George Washington University. She received her A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis (in classics and political science), and her Ph.D. from NYU.