PLS Professor Emeritus honored with APSA Service Award

May 13, 2025

The American Political Science Association has announced that the recipient of this year's Service Award is MSU PLS Professor Emeritus Reginald "Reggie" Sheehan.

"This year’s award honors Reggie’s remarkable career of service to the discipline—service that has spanned decades, institutions, and generations of scholars. With multiple nomination letters cosigned by 26 members of the section, including both junior and senior colleagues, Reggie is truly deserving of this recognition. Below is a surely incomplete list of some of the many ways he has generously dedicated his time and efforts to the betterment of the field, as noted in the letters we received," wrote Dr. Sivaram Cheruvu (University of Texas-Dallas).

"For the past seven years, Reggie served as a permanent program officer for the Law & Science program at the NSF, a position that previously rotated among short-term appointees. In this role, he shepherded numerous Law and Courts grant proposals through the submission and review process, offering thoughtful feedback to grant investigators and prospective applicants alike. These efforts have helped produce award-winning books, widely cited articles, valuable media insights, mentoring opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students (such as the Law and Courts Women Writing Group) , and publicly available data. As one letter put it: "Importantly, Reggie's work does not end with the grant's submission—he is also our greatest cheerleader and resource when we get them. Reggie treats our successes as his own. If we get a grant, he calls us personally to tell us and fully encourages us to celebrate, even if we are trying to keep our business faces on while dancing on the inside. Once the grant money lands in our accounts, he patiently guides us through everything."

Beyond his role at NSF, Reggie has served the Law and Courts Section in many capacities, including as Treasurer and Secretary, both important and time-consuming roles. He has also contributed his time to a number of section award committees, such as the Pritchett Award Committee, always with diligence and care.

Equally impactful is Reggie’s work in developing key data infrastructure for the field. Most notably, he co-developed the National High Courts Database (with Haynie, Songer, and Tate), a groundbreaking dataset covering eleven national high courts across multiple decades, along with the Multi-User Database of Courts of Appeals Decisions. While still impressive today, at the time of their release these projects represented a remarkable and unparalleled step forward in our ability to systematically study judicial behavior. These data helped usher in a new generation of law and courts scholars focused on both American and comparative courts, opening avenues of inquiry that were simply not possible before.

In short, Reggie’s contributions to our field are both manifest and transformational, and we are proud to recognize his extraordinary service with this year’s award. We look forward to celebrating Reggie’s achievements in Vancouver!"