Kevin J. McMahon is the John R. Reitemeyer Professor of Political Science. The University of Chicago Press published his most recent book, A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide between the Justices & the People, in 2024. It is the third book in a trilogy entitled Democracy in Court? Presidents & Justices. In 2014, his second book, Nixon’s Court: His Challenge to Judicial Liberalism and Its Political Consequences (University of Chicago, 2011), won the rarely-awarded Erwin N. Griswold Book Prize from the Supreme Court Historical Society. Upon receiving that award, he delivered a lecture in the courtroom of the United States Supreme Court. Nixon's Court was also chosen as a 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. His first book, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown (University of Chicago, 2004), won the American Political Science Association’s Richard E. Neustadt Award. Professor McMahon is also the co-author/co-editor of three books on the presidency and presidential elections and the author of numerous book chapters, journal articles, and short essays.

Professor McMahon earned his PhD at Brandeis University in 1997. As an advanced graduate student, he taught for two years in Russia with the Civic Education Project (a.k.a., the “academic Peace Corps”). In 2006, he was a Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair at the University of Montreal. In the classroom, his teaching style is Socratic in spirit, driven by a philosophy that students perform best when they actively participate in their own learning.

curriculum vitae