Ph.D.,
Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
J.D., University of Minnesota Law School
Dr. Sweet taught at
Dickinson College before joining the Honors College.
As a scholar of public law and American government, Dr. Sweet’s research chiefly focuses on the political causes and consequences of law-making. Sweet’s dissertation, Supreme Policymaking: Coping with the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Policies, examined the impact of Supreme Court decisions – specifically focusing on how the legislative and executive branches react to judicial decisions. His next major research project examines both judicial and legislative decision-making in the realm of constitutional rights. This project, entitled, Rights Politics: The Creation, Rejection, and Disintegration of American Rights, aims to explain why the U.S. government grants rights, and creates a model to predict which other rights will be created or dissolved by the government in the future.
