Susan Rose-Ackerman

Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science 

Susan Rose-Ackerman, B.A. Wellesley College, Ph.D. Yale University, faculty member at Yale from 1974-1982 and again since 1987: You are the world’s foremost authority on the economics of corruption. Your signature book on this issue, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform (now in a second edition with Bonnie J. Palifka) has been translated into 17 languages, and your many other articles and books on this and closely related subjects demonstrate why you are the mainstay and main attraction at international conferences on this topic. Beyond this, you have been enormously influential in rejuvenating the field of comparative administrative law, exploring administrative law issues in multiple jurisdictions and in comparative perspective. You have edited two important collections on comparative administrative law and started a comparative administrative law list-serve that has worldwide participation and is an important resource for scholars seeking enlightenment about practices in jurisdictions beyond their own. 

How you have done all of this while teaching at both the Law School and in the Department of Political Science and being such a good and complete citizen of both is anyone’s guess. Trained in economics and teaching in the Political Science Department and the Law School, you have brought all your expertise in these disciplines to bear on the kind of teaching you only could uniquely do—for example, your highly regarded Yale College Ethics, Politics and Economics course on “Ethics and Multinational Business” or your cross-listed and intriguingly-titled law and political science course called “Corruption, Economic Development and Democracy.” In these areas you have made a teaching contribution that will be challenging ever to replicate. 

All this and you also have been a superb adviser, whose former Ph.D. students, now teaching at major universities, unfailingly commend you for your rigor and your tremendous intellectual and personal support. And despite all of the demands on your time, you have ever been very willing, despite your many law obligations, to play a full role in committees and activities of all kinds in both the Law School and Political Science Department. Yours is a truly admirable academic career, worthy of the highest respect and honor. Given your interests and energy, we suspect (and hope) that “retirement” is not an apt description of the next phase of your life.