Robert Green McCloskey (8 January 1916 – 4 August 1969) was an American political historian.

Biography

Robert McCloskey originally studied at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

, receiving an AB, eventually completing his doctorate in political science at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, whose faculty he joined in 1948. He was secretary of the Littauer Center of Public Administration until 1954, when Arthur Maass took the position. He became an associate professor at the university in 1953, eventually settling as Professor of Government in 1958. McCloskey was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1959. His book ''The American Supreme Court'' was the winner of the 1961 Award of the Contemporary Affairs Society. In 1966, McCloskey was named Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government at Harvard. The position had been vacant since 1963, upon the death of V. O. Key. McCloskey died on 4 August 1969. McCloskey's book ''American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise'' was first published in 1951. The book was based on his doctoral dissertation, and explored

conservatism in the United States Conservatism in the United States is one of two major political ideologies in the United States, with the other being liberalism. Traditional American conservatism is characterized by a belief in individualism, traditionalism, capitalism, ...

from the

Reconstruction era The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...

to 1910, by considering the publications of

William Graham Sumner William Graham Sumner (October 30, 1840 – April 12, 1910) was an American clergyman, social scientist, and neoclassical liberal. He taught social sciences at Yale University, where he held the nation's first professorship in sociology and bec ...

Stephen Johnson Field Stephen Johnson Field (November 4, 1816 – April 9, 1899) was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897, the second longest tenure of any justice. Prior to this ap ...

, and

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

. The first edition of ''The American Supreme Court'' was published in 1961 as part of a series, and described as "lucidly written, well-reasoned, and concise" by Robert J. Harris, and "one of the best of a rare breed" by Paul W. Fox. In 2011, Keith E. Whittington called it "the classic one-volume history of the Court." Robert McCloskey married Helen Stueland, with who he had 3 children (including economist

Deirdre McCloskey Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (born Donald Nansen McCloskey; September 11, 1942) is an American economist and academic. Since 2023 she has been a Distinguished Scholar and holder of the Isaiah Berlin Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute i ...

) before dying at the Peter Bent Bridhamn Hospital (now part of the

Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH or The Brigham) is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two ...

) in August 1969. Following his death, a student of McCloskey's,

Sanford Levinson Sanford Victor Levinson (born June 17, 1941) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on constitutional law. A professor at the University of Texas Law School, Levinson is notable for his criticism of the United States Constitution as ...

, continued updating ''The American Supreme Court''. A third book by McCloskey, titled ''The Modern Supreme Court'', was posthumously published in 1974.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCloskey, Robert Green 1916 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty Political historians 20th-century American political scientists