FREDERICK S. WOOD

E-mail: woodfred@msu.edu  
Webpage: www.msu.edu/~woodfred
Fields: American Politics, Political Methodology
Dissertation: Public Opinion and the Policy Choices of State Supreme Courts
Expected Dissertation Defense: Spring 2008
Committee: Saundra K. Schneider (Chair), William G. Jacoby, Valentina Bali, Mae Kuykendall (College of Law)

Frederick Wood began his graduate education at the University at Albany.  His M.A. Thesis, “The Second Amendment: Original Intent and the Missing Incorporation Decision,” compared the relationship between the right to bear arms in state constitutions around the founding period to the U.S. Supreme Court’s later interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Following his studies at the University at Albany, he entered the Ph.D. program at Michigan State University.  Frederick’s research interests concern the interrelationship between society and the law and the effect of mass-elite linkages on policy outcomes.
His dissertation addresses the question of whether the judiciary is a representative part of state government.  Using individual justice voting data on gender and sexual orientation discrimination cases, he constructs a decision-making model that includes attitudinal, legal, and contextual factors.  This allows him to determine whether state high court justices, like other political actors, are influenced by constituency opinion in their decision-making processes.  His dissertation will contribute to the literature on the role of public opinion in the policy process, the effect of institutional design on elite behavior, and the evaluation of judicial selection and retention reforms.  He has presented portions of his dissertation at the annual meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, and the Law & Society Association. 
While at MSU, Frederick was a research assistant on the State Supreme Court Data Project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.  He has also received external support from the H.B. Earhart Foundation.  In 2002, he was awarded a Clifford C. Clogg scholarship by the American Political Science Association’s Political Methodology Section to attend the ICPSR summer program in quantitative methods.  He also attended the ICPSR summer program in 2001 and 2004. 

Frederick has extensive teaching experience in American Politics, Public Law, and Political Methodology.  He has served as an independent instructor at Skidmore College, Siena College, the University at Albany, and Michigan State University.  Currently, Frederick is a Visiting Instructor for the 2007-2008 academic year at Western Michigan University.  At WMU, Frederick teaches classes on national government, judicial process, and the portrayal of the law in the mass media.