Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. The author of over 250 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, Levinson is also the author of four books.
Constitutional Law, constitutional design, emergency powers and constitutional theory, torture and the law
He has taught a course on "Torture, Law, and Lawyers" at the Harvard Law School. He is also a regular participant on the popular blog, Balkinization. He has visited at the Boston University, Georgetown, Harvard, New York University, and Yale law schools, as well as the law faculties at the University of Paris II, Central European University in Budapest, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jewish Philosophy in Jerusalem.
Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); and, most recently, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006). His edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2006, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Reading Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988, with Steven Mallioux); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies (1998, with William Eskridge); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (2005, with Batholomew Sparrow); and Torture: A Collection (2004, revised paperback edition, 2006), which includes reflections on the morality, law, and politics of torture from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.