Professor Charles Cameron has been awarded APSA’s Law and Court Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given for a “lifetime of significant scholarship, teaching and service to the Law and Courts field.”  

The committee writes:
"Professor Cameron’s scholarship has shaped the study of law and courts through the innovative use of rational choice institutionalism. His work combines insights from many fields of the social sciences, a careful attention to key elements of judicial practice, and a keen sense for what is important.  Professor Cameron has made lasting contributions to at least three fields in our section. His application of principal-agency theory to the study of the judicial hierarchy illuminated, for example, how a Supreme Court with a small docket might nevertheless influence the application of law across a large system. His work on collegial decision-making, along with his fundamental contributions to the development of the “case-space” model, has illustrated several surprising insights about judicial decision-making that follow from carefully modeling the unique features of judicial work. His scholarship on judicial appointments provided critical links between judicial and legislative politics, and ultimately documented how broader changes in American politics changed the process by which Supreme Court Justices are appointed. His work has directly informed hundreds of applications by other scholars.
 
"The committee is also thrilled to highlight Professor Cameron’s decades of excellent mentorship. Many students wrote to express how he fundamentally impacted their scholarship and their lives. They wrote of his eagerness to engage students as intellectual equals and by so doing pull them into his lessons and inspire them to find their own voices. Professor Cameron’s faculty colleagues wrote about how they have been positively impacted over the years by his patient and engaged feedback. All nominators wrote to thank Professor Cameron for making their own work richer and more enjoyable. Taken together, his nominators tell a story of a person who has helped build a vibrant intellectual community."

Professor Cameron will be celebrated at the APSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver in September.